The life of James McNeill Whistler

<D

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM OF ARCHAEOLOGY

Lent to the Department of Art & Archaeology,

University of Toronto.
From the Van Home Collection.

2.'l

THE LIFE OF JAMES
McNEILL WHISTLER

THE LIFE OF JAMES
McNEILL WHISTLER

;•*£**•

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER AS A BOY
Bv SIR WILLIAM BOXALL

w

THE LIFE OF JAMES
McNEILL WHISTLER

BY

E. R. AND J. PENNELL

IN 'TWO VOLUMES
ILLUSTRATED

VOLUME I

PHILADELPHIA

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1908

Printed by BALLAJJTYNF. *» Co. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London

PEEFACE

OUR debt is large to the many who have aided us in pre-
paring our Life of Whistler. His sister Lady Haden, his
sister-in-law Mrs. William Whistler, his niece Mrs. Charles
Thynne, his cousins Mrs. Dr. Stanton and Miss Emma W.
Palmer have kindly supplied us with much information that
only his family could give, and have allowed us to consult
family papers. Friends of his earliest years have come to
our assistance : Mr. George Lucas, Mrs. Kate Livermore,
and, after her death in 1906, her daughter Mrs. S. P. Sutton,
Miss Emily Chapman, Mr. Delmar Morgan (who knew the
Whistlers in St. Petersburg), Mr. Theodore L. Harrison
(whose father was associated with Major Whistler in his
engineering work in Russia), the late Mrs. Louise Chandler
Moulton, Mr. Frederick B. Miles of Baltimore, Mr. Henry
Labouchere. Nothing could exceed the courtesy of Whistler's
old classmates, their representatives and officers now at
West Point : Col. C. W. Larned (who procured for us the
official record, sent us numerous details of interest, lists of
names and addresses, and answered our every appeal), Mr.

F. Holden, the Librarian at the Military Academy, Gen.
Loomis L. Langdon, Gen. C. B. Comstock, Gen. Henry L.
Abbot, Gen. O. O. Howard, Gen. D. McM. Gregg, Gen.

G. W. C. Lee, Major Zalinski, Major H. H. Benham, Captain
Joseph Wheeler, Mr. Thomas Childs. Old comrades of
Whistler's days in Paris have been as considerate : Mr.
Luke lonides (then and always Whistler's friend, who has
spared himself no trouble for our benefit), Mr. Thomas

PREFACE

Armstrong, Mr. Joseph Rowley, M. Carolus-Duran, Felix
Bracquemond, M. Henri Oulevey, Charles Drouet (the
sculptor, who died only just before our book was finished
and whose legacy of Whistler's Old Man Smoking to the
Luxembourg has been announced since it went to press).
Friends of the first London days have been no less generous :
Mr. W. M. Rossetti (who searched his papers for us, wrote
his impressions, and made many notes), Miss Greaves, Mr.
Walter Greaves, Lord Redesdale, Mr. George Meredith,
Mr. Fred. Jameson, Mr. Arthur Severn, Mr. Percy Thomas.
We are also indebted to the directors and officials of various
Academies, Galleries and Societies with which Whistler was
associated in one way or another : the authorities of the
Imperial Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, Mr. Sidney
Colvin and Mr. Campbell Dodgson of the British Museum,
Mr. E. F." Strange of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sir
Richard R. Holmes, late Librarian at Windsor Castle, Heer
B. W. F. van Riemsdijk, Curator of the Rijks Museum at
Amsterdam, Mr. William H. Goodyear, Curator of Fine Arts
at the Brooklyn Museum, the Glasgow Corporation, Sir
Walter Armstrong of the National Gallery of Ireland, Mr.
T. W. Lyster of the National Library of Ireland, Mr. Alfred
East, Mr. Watt Cafe and Mr. Carew Martin of the Royal
Society of British Artists, Mr. John Lavery, Mr. T Stirling
Lee and Dr.C.Bakker of the International Society of Sculptors,
Painters and Gravers, Mr. Francis Bate of the New English
Art Club, Dr. Norman Moore and Dr. Edward Liveing,
Registrar, of the Royal College of Physicians, Mr. Holker
Abbott, President of the Copley Society in Boston.

The sympathetic co-operation of artists is a tribute
Whistler would have appreciated : Mr. Edwin A. Abbey,
Mr. Otto Bacher, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Addams (Whistler's
devoted pupils and apprentices), Mr. John W. Alexander,
Miss Nelia Casella, Miss A. M. Chambers, Mr. William M.
vi

PREFACE

Chase, Mr. J. E. Christie, Mr. Timothy Cole, Mr. Walter
Crane, Mr. Ralph Curtis, Mr. F. Morley Fletcher, Mr. Walter
Gay, Mr. T. C. Gotch, Mr. William Graham, Mr. George
R. Halkett, Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, Mr. Alexander Harrison,
Mr. George A. Holmes, Mr. W. Ayerst Ingram, Mr. E. P.
Jacomb-Hood, Mr. Francis James, Mr. J. Kerr-Lawson,
Mr. E. Lanteri, Hon. Frederick Lawless, Mr. Frederick Mac-
Monnies, Mr. Mortimer Menpes, Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt, Mr.
Harper Pennington, M. Rodin, Mr. John S. Sargent, Pro-
fessor G. Sauter, Mr. Frank Short, Mr. Sidney Starr, Mrs.
Stillman, Mr. E. A. Walton, Mr. T. R. Way, Mr. J. Alden
Weir, Mr. Henry Woods, Mr. E. H. Wuerpel.

We can do no more than give the names of those to whom
we are debtors in various other ways, to some for important
facts or loans, to others for a few words illuminating a certain
subject or period: Mr. W. C. Alexander, Mrs. George Boughton,
Mr. Ernest G. Brown, Mr. Alan S. Cole (who placed his diary
in our hands, with a generosity for which we cannot be
too grateful, so invaluable is it as a record of years
before we knew Whistler, when dates are difficult to
fix and his movements to follow), Lady Archibald
Campbell, Lady Colin Campbell, Mr. Fitzroy Carrington,
Mrs. D'Oyly Carte, the late Dr. Moncure D. Conway, Mr.
J. J. Cowan, Mr. S. R. Crockett, Rev. R. W. Davies, Mr.
Randall Davies, Miss Annie Davis, Mr. Charles W. Des-
champs, Mr. Walter Dowdeswell, M. Durand-Ruel, M.
Theodore Duret (whose own book was never a check upon
his liberality in helping us with ours), Mr. Fred. Eaton,
Secretary of the Royal Academy, the late Mrs. Edwin
Edwards, Messrs. Ellis, Mr. S. M. Fox, Mr. Albert E. Gallatin,
Mrs. J. L. Gardner, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mr. Frederick
Goulding, Mr. Algernon^Graves, M. Gerard Harry, Mr. J. P.
Heseltine, Mr. E. J. Horniman, M.P., Mr. Samuel Hammond
(who let us select from his interesting and, as far as we know,

vii

PREFACE

unrivalled series of early Whistler drawings), Mr. Charles
Holme, Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Co., Mrs. Alfred Hunt,
Miss Violet Hunt, Mr. Constant Huntington, Mr. E. G.
Kennedy (and few have so intimate a knowledge of Whistler
and his work), Mr. Frederick Keppel and Mr. David Keppel
(who, with their partner Mr. FitzRoy Carrington, have gone
to endless trouble in collecting material and verifying facts
for us), Mr. Gustav Kobbe, Mr. O. O. Kyllmann, Lady Lewis,
Mrs. Leyland, Mr. Lazenby Liberty, Mr. C. H. McCall, Mr.
Howard Mansfield, Mr. William Marchant, Mr. Murray
Marks, Mrs. Marzetti, Mrs. Lynedoch Moncrieff, Mr. Arthur
Morrison, Mrs. Sydney Morse, Mrs. John Newmarch,
Messrs. Obach, Mr. S. S. Pawling, Mr. W. Booth Pearsall,
Mr. Bliss Perry, Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, M.
Edmond Picard, Mr. W. G. Rawlinson, Mrs. Richmond
Ritchie, Mrs. F. Robb, Sir Rennell Rodd, Mr. Robert
Ross, Countess Rucellai, Mr. Malcolm S. Salaman, Mrs.
Spring-Rice, Mr. A. Strahan, Sir Thomas Sutherland, Mr.
Arthur Symons, the American Ambassador, Hon. Van
L. Meyer and the Third Secretary of Legation Mr. Basil
Miles, at St. Petersburg, Mr. H. S. Theobald, K.C., Mr. D.
Croal Thomson (who has permitted us to consult his in-
valuable Whistler papers), Mr. and Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin,
Mr. Emery Walker, Rev. Lionel J. Wallace (Vicar of Goring
Church where the Whistlers lie buried), Mr. Pickford Waller
(whose extraordinary collection of Whistleriana he entrusted
to us while our work was in progress), Mrs. Westlake, Lord
and Lady Wolseley, Dr. C. Hagberg Wright.

It is not easy when so many have been induced by their
interest in Whistler or affection for him to help us, to explain
just what each and every one has done. In a great number
of cases the pages of our book will give some idea of the
extent of our indebtedness, and at least we can say how deep
and sincere is our sense of obligation. One special word
viii

PREFACE

of thanks, however, we must add. To no one do we owe
more than to our publisher, Mr. William Heinemann, who
has drawn upon his own friendship with Whistler to enrich
us, who has aided us with his counsel, worked with us
through difficulties, and faced the not light task of reading
our book in manuscript and proof, giving us the advantage
of his criticism and advice.

JOSEPH PENNELL.
ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL.

3 ADELPHI TERRACE HOUSE,

LONDON, W.C.

IX

CONTENTS

PAGE

INTRODUCTION xxiii

CHAPTER I. THE WHISTLER FAMILY. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN THIRTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-
THREE 1

Whistler's Ancestors — His Parents — Birth — Early Years

CHAPTER II. IN RUSSIA. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
FORTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE 11

Life in Russia — Schooldays — Begins His Art Studies in the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts — Death of Major Whistler — Return to America

CHAPTER III. SCHOOL-DAYS IN POMFRET. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN FORTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-ONE 26

The Pomfret School and School-Mates — Early Drawings

CHAPTER IV. WEST POINT. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR 30

Whistler as Cadet in the U.S. Military Academy — His Studies — Failure
— Stories Told of Him — His Estimate of West Point

CHAPTER V. THE COAST SURVEY. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE 39

Life inWashington — Obtains Position as Draughtsman in the U.S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey — First Plates — Resignation — Starts f or _ Paris

CONTENTS

PACK

CHAPTER VI. STUDENT DAYS IN THE LATIN
QUARTER. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE
TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE 48

Arrival in Paris — Enters as Student at Gleyre's — His Fettow Students —
Adventures — Journey to Alsace

CHAPTER VII. WORKING DAYS IN THE LATIN
QUARTER. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE TO
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE CONTINUED 66

His Studies — Work at the Louvre — Visit to Art Treasures Exhibition
at Manchester — Etchings — Paintings — Rejection at the Salon and
Exhibition in Bonvin's Studio

CHAPTER VIII. THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN
SIXTY-THREE 76

In London with the Hadens — First appearance at Royal Academy —
Kindness to French Fellow Students — Shares Studio with Du Maurier
— Gaieties — Mr. Arthur Severn's Reminiscences — Work on the River —
joe — Etchings published by Mr. Edmund Thomas

CHAPTER IX. THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN
SIXTY-THREE CONTINUED 88

Paintings and Exhibitions — The Music Room — Mr. Frederick Goulding
on his Printing — Visits to Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards — Summer in
Brittany — "The White Girl " — Berners Street Gallery — Baudelaire on
his Etchings — Illustrations — Salon des Refuses — First Gold Medal

CHAPTER X. CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
SIXTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX 106

Settles with his Mother at No. 7 Lindsey Row, Chelsea — The Greaves
Family — The Limerston Street Studio and Mr. J. E. Christie — Rossetti
— The Tudor House Circle, Swinburne, Meredith, Frederick Sandys,
Howell — "Blue and White" — W. M. Rossetti' s Reminiscences
xii

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER XI. CHELSEA DAYS. THE YEARS EIGH-
TEEN SIXTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX
CONTINUED 121

The Japanese Pictures — " The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine " —
Japanese Influence — "The Little White Girl" — Fantin's " Hommage
a Delacroix" — "The Toast" — Arrival in London of Dr. Whistler —
At Trouville with Courbet — Journey to Valparaiso

CHAPTER XII. CHELSEA DAYS CONTINUED. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX TO
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-TWO 137

Return to London — Removal to No. 2 Lindsey Row — The House and its
Decorations — The 1867 Exhibition in Paris — Affair at the Burlington
Fine Arts Club — " Symphony in White, No. Ill," the First Picture
Exhibited as a Symphony — Theories — Development — Discouragement
— Mr. Fred. Jameson's Reminiscences — Decoration — Hamerton's
"Etching and Etchers" — Etchings and Dry-Points — Exhibitions —
Rejection at the Royal Academy — First Exhibition of Picture as a
Nocturne — Relations to the Royal Academy

CHAPTER XIII. NOCTURNES. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-TWO TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR 161

Nocturnes — Extent of Debt to Japanese — Methods and Materials-
Subjects — Origin of Title — His Explanation in " The Gentle Art "

CHAPTER XIV. PORTRAITS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-TWO TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR 168

"The Mother" — "Carlyle" — "Miss Alexander" — Mr. and Mrs.
Leyland — Mrs. Louis Huth — Show of his own Work in Pall-Mall —
Indignation Roused by His Titles

CHAPTER XV. THE OPEN DOOR. THE YEAR
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR AND AFTER 182

Whistler's Gaiety and Hospitality — His Amusemsnt in Society — His
Dinners and Sunday Breakfasts — Reminiscences of his Entertainments
— His Talk — Clubs — Restaurants — The Theatre

xiii

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER XVI. THE PEACOCK ROOM. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-
SEVEN 198

Work at Exhibitions and in the Studio — Portrait of Irving — "Rosa
Corder" — "The Fur Jacket" — "Connie Gilchrist" — The Peacock
Boom — Mr. Leyland's House in Prince's Gate. — Its Decoration —
Whistler's Scheme for the Dining-Boom and its Development — The
Work Finished — Quarrel with Leyland

CHAPTER XVII. THE GROSVENOR GALLERY. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN TO EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-EIGHT 210

Sir Coutt Lindsay's New Gallery — First Exhibition at the Orosvenor —
Whistler's Contributions — Buskin's Criticism of " The Fatting Socket "
in " Fors Clavigera" — Whistler sues Him for Libel — Etchings —
Lithographs — Drawings of Blue and White for Sir Henry Thompson's
Catalogue — Caricatures — Sends a Second Time to the Orosvenor

CHAPTER XVIII. THE WHITE HOUSE. THE YEAR
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT 219

Paris Universal Exhibition of 1878 — Harmony in Yellow and
Gold — Whistler as Decorator — Lady Archibald Campbell's Appreciation
— Plan of Opening an Atelier for Students — No. 2 Lindsey Bow given
up — E. W. Godwin Builds the White House for Him — His Mother's
Health — She Leaves Him for Hastings — Money Difficulties — Mezzo-
tints of the "Carlyle" and "Rosa C order"

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIAL. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-EIGHT 229

Whistler's Beasons for the Action against Buskin — His Position and
Buskin's compared — Refusal of Artists to Support Whistler — Trial in
the Exchequer Chamber, Westminster — Verdict — The General Criticism
— Mr. T. Armstrong and Mr. Arthur Severn on the Trial — Collection to
pay Buskin's Expenses — Failure to raise one for Whistler

CHAPTER XX. BANKRUPTCY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-EIGHT TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE 246

Caricatures and Comments — ' ' Whistler v. Buskin : Art and Art Critics "
— Whistler again at the Grosvenor — His Critics — His Financial
xiv

CONTENTS

PAGE

Embarrassments — Hie Manner of Meeting Them — Declared Bankrupt
— " The Gold Scab " — Commission from the Fine Art Society for the
Venetian Etchings — Starts for Venice — The Sale of the White House —
Sale of Blue and White, Pictures, Prints, etc., at Sotheby's

CHAPTER XXI. VENICE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY 261

Whistler's Arrival in Venice — First Impressions, Disappointments and
Difficulties — His Friends in Venice and Their Memories of Him —
Duveneck and his " Boys " — Whistler's Hard Work — His Lodgings
and Restaurants — The Ca]'es — Stories Told of Him — Reminiscences of
Mr. Harper Pennington and Mr. Ralph Curtis

CHAPTER XXII. VENICE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY CONTINUED 276

His Work in Venice — Pastels and his Methods — Etchings — Printing
— Mr. Frank Short's Appreciation of Him as Printer — Japanese
Method of Drawing — Water-Colours and Paintings

CHAPTER XXHI. BACK IN LONDON. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE 289

Return to London and Sudden Appearance at Fine Art Society's —
Prints Venice Plates — Exhibition of "The Twelve" at the Fine Art
Society's — Exhibition of Venice Pastels — Decoration of Gallery —
Bewilderment of Critics and the Public — Death of his Mother — " The
Piker Papers" — The Portrait of his Mother Exhibited in Phila-
delphia— Etchings begin to be shown in America

CHAPTER XXIV. THE JOY OF LIFE. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-
FOUR 300

Takes a Studio at 13 Tite Street — His " Joyousness " — Letters to the
Press — His "Amazing " Costumes — Portraits of Lady Meux — His Other
Sitters — Mrs. Marzetti's account of the painting of " The Blue Girl " —
Lady Archibald Campbell's Reminiscences of the Sittings for her
Portrait — Portrait of M. Duret — "The Paddon Papers" — Second
Exhibition of Venice Etchings at the Fine Art Society's — Excitement
it Created — The " Carlyle " at Edinburgh — Proposal to buy it for
Scottish National Portrait Gallery — Comes to nothing — Whistler In-
volved in a Church Congress

1:6 xv

JOE
(Dry-point)

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER AS A BOY BY SIR WILLIAM BOXALL

Frontispiece

To face
page

DR. DANIEL WHISTLER (1619-1684) 2

From the picture in the Royal College of Physicians

MAJOR GEORGE WASHINGTON WHISTLER (Whistler s Father) 4>

By permission of Mrs. Dr. George D. Stanton and Miss Emma W.
Palmer

HOUSE IN WHICH WHISTLER WAS BORN, LOWELL, MASS. 6

From a photograph supplied by Mrs. Dr. George D. Stanton and Miss
Emma W. Palmer

OLD CORNER HOUSE, STONINGTON 6

From a photograph supplied by Mrs, Dr. George D. Stanton and Miss
Emma W. Palmer

ST. ANNE'S CHURCH, LOWELL, MASS. 6

From a photograph supplied by Mrs. Dr. George D. Stanton and Miss
Emma W. Palmer

DR. CHARLES DONALD McNeiLL (done in Hair) 8

From a miniature in the possession of Mrs. Dr. George D. Stanton
and Miss Emma W. Palmer

MRS. CHARLES DONALD McNEiLL 8

From a miniature in the possession of Mrs. Dr. George D. Stanton
and Miss Emma W. Palmer

MAJOR GEORGE WASHINGTON WHISTLER AS A YOUNG MAN (Whistler's

Father) ] 2

From a miniature in the possession of Mrs. William Whistler

MRS. GEORGE WASHINGTON WHISTLER (Whistler's Mother) 12

In the possession of Mrs» Dr. George Stanton and Miss Emma W.
Palmer

xvii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To/ace
page

THE Two BROTHERS 26

From a miniature formerly in the possession of Mrs. Dr. George D.
Stanton and Miss Emma W. Palmer

DRAWINGS MADE AT POMFRET 28

In the possession of Samuel Hammond, Esq.

DRAWING MADE AT WEST POINT (Copy of a Print) 32

From the original at West Point by permission of Colonel C. W.
Larned

TITLE-PAGE FROM SCHOOL-BOOK, WITH SKETCHES MADE BY WHISTLER 34

In the possession of Thomas Childs, Esq.

SAM WELLER'S LODGING IN THE FLEET PRISON (Water-Colour) 36

In the possession of Mrs. William Whistler

ON POST DUTY AT WEST POINT (An Encampment) 36

From the original at West Point by permission of Colonel C. W.
Larned

THE COAST SURVEY, No. 1 (Etching) 44

COAST SURVEY, No. 2, ANACAPA ISLAND (Etching) 44

LA MERE GERARD 58

Formerly in the possession of A. C. Swinburne, Esq.

T&TE DE PAYSANNE 68

Now in the possession of Madame la Comtesse De Beam

DIANA AT THE POOL (Copy of a picture by Boucher) 72

In the possession of Louis W. Winans, Esq.

AT THE PIANO 76

In the possession of Edmund Davis, Esq.

DESIGN FOR PROGRAMME BY Du MAURIER 84

In the possession of Mrs. John Newmarch

WAPPING 88

In the possession of Mrs. Hutton

THE Music ROOM (Harmony in Green and Rose) 90

Now in the possession of Colonel Frank Hecker
THE COAST OF BRITTANY 94

Formerly in the possession of Boss Winans, Esq.
THE BLUE WAVE (Blue and Silver) 94

Now in the possession of Alfred Attmore Pope, Esq.
THE THAMES IN ICE (The 25*A of December I860, on the Thames) 96

Now in the possession of C. L. Freer, Esq.
xviii

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To face
page

ILLUSTRATIONS TO " THE FIRST SERMON " (From " Good Words '') 98

In the possession of Harold Hartle)', Elsq.

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM " ONCE A WEEK " 100

By permission of Messrs. Chatto and Windus

SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ (Chalk Drawing) 104

In the possession of H. Graves, Esq.

LINDSEY Row 108

From a photograph lent by Mrs. Sydney Morse

No. 7 LINDSEY Row (First House) 108

No. 2 LINDSEY Row (Second House 108

THE WHITE GIRL (Symphony in White, No. 1) 112

Now in the possession of Harris Whittemore, Esq.

ONE OF THE BOARD (Caricature made at West Point} 11 6

In the possession of Thomas Childs, Esq.

WEST POINT DRAWING 116

In the possession of Samuel Hammond, Esq.

ON POST IN CAMP (An hour in the life of a Cadet) 120

From the originals at West Point by permission of Colonel C.JW.
Lamed

THE LANGE LEIZEN — OF THE Six MARKS (Purple and Rose) 122

Now in the possession of J. G. Johnson, Esq.

HOMMAGE 1 DELACROIX (From the picture by Fantin-Latour. Salon,

1864) 130

In the Moreau-N61aton collection now at the Musee des Arts
De'coratifs, Paris

VALPARAISO (Nocturne, Blue and Gold) 134

Formerly in the possession of George McCulloch, Esq.

VALPARAISO (Study for the large picture) 1 34

Now in the possession of T. B. Way, Esq.

STUDY OF BATTERSEA BRIDGE (Chalk Drawing) 134

In the possession of H. J. Pollitt, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER (C/ialk Drawing) 1 36

In the possession of T. Way, Esq.

STUDIES IN BLACK AND WHITE CHALK (For the Six Projects) 138

SEA-BEACH AND FIGURES (Pastel — Study for the Six Projects) 140

STUDY OF NUDE (Chalk Drawing — Studies for the Six Projects) 140

NUDE (Chalk— Study for the Six Projects) 142

xix

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To face,
page

THE LILY (Pastel— Study for the Six Projects) 1 42

DESIGN FOR A FAN (Water-colour — Study for the Six Projects) 144

TILLIE : A MODEL (Dry-point — Study for the Six Projects) 144

STUDIES FOX THE Six PROJECTS 146

SYMPHONY IN WHITE (No. III.) 1 46

Now in the possession of Edmund Davis, Esq.

THREE FIGURES (Pink and Grey) 1 48

Now in the possession of Alfred Chapman, Esq.

DESIGN FOR MOSAIC FOR SOUTH KENSINGTON (Pastel) 150

Now in the possession of Graham Robertson, Esq.

VARIATIONS IN VIOLET AND GREEN 1 56

Now in the possession of Sir Charles MacClaren, Bt.

NOCTURNE, BATTERSEA BRIDGE (Arrangement in Grey and Gold) 1 62

In the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery, Stratford-on-Avon

NOCTURNE -(Blue and Green) 162

Now in the possession of W. C. Alexander, Esq.

CREMORNE, No. I. (Nocturne) 164

Now in the possession of Mrs. Argenti

CREMORNE (Nocturne, in Green and Gold) 164

Formerly in the possession of W. Heinemann, Esq.

OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE (Nocturne Blue and Gold) \QQ

In the Tate Gallery

PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S MOTHER (Arrangement in Grey and

Black) iQ8

In the Musee du Luxembourg

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE (Arrangement in Grey and Black

No. II.) 170

In the Glasgow Gallery

PORTRAIT OF Miss CICELY HENRIETTA ALEXANDER (Harmony in

Grey and Green) 172

In the possession of W. C. Alexander, Esq.

STUDIES FOR " THE BLUE GIRL " (Miss FLORENCE LEYLAND) 1 74

In the possession of W. C. Alexander, Esq.

SKETCHES OF Miss GRACE ALEXANDER 174

In the possession of W. C. Alexander, Esq.
XX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 o face
page
PORTRAIT OF MRS. F. R. LEYLAND (Symphony in Flesh Colour and

Pin^ 176

In the possession of Mrs. F. R. Leyland

PORTRAIT OF F. R. LEYLAND (Arrangement in Black) 178

Now in the possession of C. L. Freer, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF MRS. Louis HUTH (Arrangement in Black No. II.) 1 80

In the possession of Mrs. Louis Huth

WHISTLER IN HIS STUDIO 184

Now in the possession of Douglas Freshfield, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF LUKE A. IONIDES 188

In the possession of Luke A. lonides, Esq.
PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER WITH HAT 190

Now in the possession of C. L. Freer, Esq.

LADY HADEN (From a Photograph) 192

SKETCHES FOR THE PEACOCK ROOM 200

In the possession of Mrs, John L. Gardner

THE PEACOCK ROOM 204

THE PEACOCK ROOM 208

SKETCHES FOR BLUE AND WHITE 216

In the possession of Murray Marks, Esq.

THE WHITE HOUSE, TITE STREET, CHELSEA 224

THE TWO BROTHERS AS BOYS AND MEN 230

By permission of Mrs. William Whistler and W. M. Rossetti, Esq.

THE FALLING ROCKET (Nocturne in Black and Gold) 232

Now in the possession of Mrs. .Samuel Untenneyer

NOCTURNE IN BLUE AND SILVER, No. 1 236

Now in the possession of Mrs. F. R. Leyland

THE GOLD SCAB, OR ERUPTION IN FRILTHY LUCRE 250

Now in the possession of E. P. Jacomb Hood, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF Miss CONNIE GILCHRIST (Harmony in Yellow and Gold,

The Gold Girl) 258

Formerly in the possession of H. Labouchere, Esq.
ST. MARK'S (Nocturne, Blue and Gold) 2o'2

Now in the possession of J. J, Cowan, Esq.

THE BASE OF THE TOWER, VENICE (Pastel) 264

In the possession of J. P. Heseltine, Esq. /

xxi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

To face

page

CALLE, VENICE (Pastel) 268

In the possession of J. P. Heseltine, Esq.

MARBLE PALACE, VENICE (Pastel) 278

In the possession of Thomas Way, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF SIR HENRY IRVING AS PHILIP II. OF SPAIN (Arrange-
ment in Black No. III.) 288

Now in the possession of G. Thomas, Esq.

PORTRAIT OF Miss ROSA CORDER (Arrangement in Black and Brown) 296

Now in the possession of R. A. Caufield, Esq.

THE YELLOW BUSKIN — PORTRAIT OF LADY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL

(Arrangement in Black) 305

In the Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia

PORTRAIT OF LADY MEUX (Arrangement in White and Black) 308

In the possession of Lady Meux

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

LITTLE FIGURES page x

JOE (Drypoint) >} xvi

EARLY DRAWING OF A DUCK in

}> 1U

AUNT KATE 25

ST. AUGUSTINE 20

xxn

INTRODUCTION

IT was Whistler's theory that the artist, like art, " happens."
Both are accidents, and not the result of preparation.
But though his art lives so long as his work remains, the
creator himself is forgotten, unless those who knew
him tell what they know. Only the masters of the past
who left records of their own lives, or who figure in the
chronicles of their contemporaries, survive as more than
names signed to their pictures or their prints. " Nobody
can write the life of a man," Dr. Johnson said to Boswell,
" but those who have eaten and drunk and lived in social in-
tercourse with him." In the case of a nature so complex,
so primitive, and yet so full of perplexing subtleties, as was
Whistler's, in the case of an artist so persistently mis-
understood, so long unrecognised, the constant, yet, un-
intentional, maker of " enemies," a faithful account of the
real man as he appeared to his personal friends, of the
supreme artist at his work, must be of value hereafter.

We had the privilege of seeing much of Whistler during
his last years, and when he was giving us his reminiscences
we came to know the Whistler we had never met — the
Whistler of Lowell and St. Petersburg, Stonington and West
Point, the Latin Quarter and Chelsea. As he talked to us,
dates became more than dates, facts more than facts, and
everything we learned from him seemed of importance in
the record he asked us to write — the story of his life. We
realised, at the same time, that everything we could learn
from others concerning him was valuable, especially from

i : c xxiii

INTRODUCTION

those who knew him well, and we have spared no pains to
gather together all available information from his friends
and from people whom work, or other interests, brought into
close contact with him. It is our good fortune to have
found for every period of his life some one qualified and
willing to help us.

We have felt our responsibility the more because, as we
undertook to write his biography at his request, we looked
upon it after his death as a sacred trust, and still more because,
in carrying out his wishes, we met with difficulties which
neither he, nor we, could have foreseen. His friends have re-
sponded to our appeal with a sympathy, a generosity, it is not
easy to overestimate. Practically, the only refusal to help in
the fulfilment of his wishes, came from Whistler's heir and
executrix, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, who not only withheld
such assistance as she might have given us, but put serious
hindrances in our way. As our story of Whistler's last
years will show, his illness was an inevitable interruption
to the book in which his enthusiasm equalled ours. He
supplied us with a great deal of material and he recalled
for us many facts about himself and his work, of which
we took careful notes in his presence, or immediately
after parting. His private correspondence would, unques-
tionably, have been devoted to our official biography,
although in the absence of a signed agreement (the need
for which under the intimate circumstances, we overlooked)
we are restrained from reproducing his letters. We have
felt this to be no light loss. We know from the many letters
Whistler wrote to us, his charm as correspondent and the many
others we have seen reveal the same gaiety in friendship and
brilliancy of wit, also his perfect courtesy and consideration
in business affairs of which there is small trace or hint in
The Gentle Art, and his inexhaustible attention to every
detail concerning his work. Hundreds of letters have been
xxiv

INTRODUCTION

placed at our disposal, and if only their substance is here
embodied we hope we have at least given an idea of the
freshness of his mind, the quickness of his wit and his readi-
ness of expression.

Great as was our disappointment when Miss Birnie Philip
declined to sanction the publication of Whistler's letters,
we should never have made the fact public, had she not
brought the matter into the law courts. It is known how
easily we there established our authority, while Miss Birnie
Philip clearly showed that the volume of letters which she
and her sister, Mrs. Whibley, were authorised to issue was to
be virtually on the lines of The Gentle Art, in the prepara-
tion of which Mrs. Whibley had helped. The Gentle Art
contained nothing but letters and documents previously
published — his public utterances in fact with occasional
reflections and comments — but no private correspondence,
so desirable in any biography. After Mr. Justice Kekewich
had declared our authority conclusively proved, Mr.
Heinemann made a further attempt to persuade Miss
Birnie Philip to assist in the carrying out of Whistler's
wishes. He was unfortunately not able to induce her to
change her attitude, and it was left therefore for us to
fulfil, unaided and to the best of our ability, the task
which we had undertaken with no little apprehension seven
years before. In the absence of the letters, the various
contributions from Whistler's friends will go far, we hope,
to counteract the impression that Whistler's name alone is suf-
ficient to sow discord and arouse quarrels. These friends may
differ as to the qualities of his art, of his wit, of his personality,
but they agree in their memory of him as a man to whom
affection was natural, who was a good companion, and the
best of friends until he was provoked into " making enemies."
Some of their impressions may seem a contradiction to
others because of differences in detail, but we print them all

xxv

INTRODUCTION

as they are, and as a rule without comment, because, in their
sincerity, they must contribute to a better knowledge and
truer appreciation of Whistler than if an endeavour were
made to reduce them to uniformity.

One other word of explanation remains to be said. The
trust Whistler confided in us does not end with his biography.
The original plan had been to publish one volume of biography
and one dealing with his work which naturally now could
not be complete if it did not include a catalogue. The
first volume has expanded into the two now issued. It
remains for us to complete our task at a future period
when difficulties of dates to which he was so indif-
ferent, and of identification of pictures, whose titles he so
capriciously changed, will have been overcome. As Whistler
placed his confidence in us, we do not consider any
effort on our part too great to enable his wishes to be
carried out, and to honour one whom we must ever re-
member as the greatest artist of his generation, the most
wonderful man we have ever known, and the most delightful
friend we have ever made.

E. & J. P.

XXVI

\\

CHAPTER I. THE WHISTLER FAMILY.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN THIRTY-FOUR
TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE

JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER was born on
July 10, 1834, at Lowell, Massachusetts, in the United
States of America.

Whistler, in the witness-box, during the suit he brought
against Ruskin in 1878, gave St. Petersburg as his birthplace
— or the reporters did — and he never denied it. Baltimore
was given by M. Duret, in an article in the Gazette des Beaux
Arts (April 1881), and M. Duret's mistake, since corrected
by him, has been many times repeated. Mrs. Livermore,
who knew Whistler as a child at Lowell and lived to tell us
of those times — she died in November 1906 — said, that
when she asked him why he did not contradict this, he
answered, " My dear Cousin Kate, if any one likes to think
I was born in Baltimore, why should I deny it ? It is of
no consequence to me ! " M. Duret suggests that, at the
time of the Ruskin trial and of his article, Whistler probably
was not sure where he was born. On entering West Point
he stated that his place of birth was Massachusetts. But
he would most likely have met any one indiscreet enough
to question him or offer him information on the subject, as
he did an American, who came up to him one evening in
the Carlton Hotel, London, and by way of introduction
said, " You know, Mr. Whistler, we were both born at Lowell,
and at very much the same time. There is only the difference
of a year — you are sixty-seven and I am sixty-eight." " And
1 834] i : A I

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

1 told him," said Whistler, from whom we had the story the
next day, " Very charming ! And so you are sixty-eight
and were born at Lowell, Massachusetts ! Most interesting,
no doubt, and as you please ! But I shall be born when
and where I want, and I do not choose to be born at Lowell,
and I refuse to be sixty-seven ! ' That was Whistler's
attitude. His own vagueness affected other authorities
until it is said that the compiler of one catalogue hesitated
to venture upon anything more definite than " McNeill
Whistler, born in the United States."

Whistler was christened at St. Anne's Church in Lowell,
on November 9, 1834. " Baptized, James Abbott, infant
son of George Washington and Anna Mathilda Whistler :
Sponsors, the parents — signed J. Edson " ; so it is recorded
in the church register. He was named after James Abbott,
of Detroit, who had married his father's elder sister, Sarah
Whistler. General Loomis L. Langdon tells us that the
McNeill (his mother's name) was added shortly after he
entered West Point.

" There is not a college in the land where a student sooner
gets a nickname. The initials of Whistler's name, combined with
the self-knowledge of his fluency of speech, quickly suggested to
him the use that would be made of them, and he instinctively
shrank from the combination. The cadets had no access to the
records, and before any cadet knew his initials, Whistler had
christened himself with his mother's name McNeill."

The Abbott he always preserved for legal and official
documents. But eventually, he dropped it for all other
purposes, " J.A.M." pleasing him no better than " J.A.W.,"
and he signed himself " James McNeill Whistler," or " J. M. N.
Whistler."

Among the papers placed at our disposal by Lady Haden
and Mrs. William Whistler are the family history and the
family tree. The Rev. Rose Fuller Whistler, in his Annals

2 [1834

DR. DANIEL WHISTLER

(1619-1684)

THE WHISTLER FAMILY

of an English Family (1887), states that Joha le Wistler
de Westhannye (1272-1307), was the founder of the family.
Another record starts with Rodolphus Whistler of Fowles-
courte, Berkshire, about 1494. A third begins with John
Whistler of Goring, Berkshire, born in 1609, and it is with
his descendants that we come on something more than a
string of names. The Whistlers, though there were well-
known branches in Essex and Sussex, lived mainly in Goring,
Whitchurch and Oxford, and are buried in many a church
and churchyard of the Thames Valley. Brasses and tablets
to the memory of several of the Fowlescourte branch, are,
after various vicissitudes, now set up in the church of St.
Mary at Goring. There is a stone tablet to Elinor Whistler,
who died in January 1630, leaving money to the poor of the
village, and she is buried in the same grave with her sister
Margaret. There is a brass to Hugh Whistler, and he stands
side by side with his wife, hands joined in prayer, while their
three sons and five daughters are grouped below. A second
brass is to " Hugh Whistler, the son of Master John Whistler
of Goring, who departed this life the 17 Day of Januarie
Anno Dominie 1675 being aged 216 years." * An amazing
statement, but there it is in the parish church, durable as
brass can make it. This remarkable ancestor also figures as
a family ghost at Gatehampton, where he is said to have
been originally buried with all his money and where he still
walks, guarding the treasures he had lived so many years to
gather. The position of the Whistlers entitled them to a
coat of arms described in the Harleian MSS. No. 1556, and
thus in Gwillim's Heraldry : " Gules, five mascles, in bend
between two Talbots passant argent ; " and the motto
was " Forward."

* We give the inscription, already printed elsewhere, because it is just the sort
of thing Whistler would have delighted in. It is a pity to spoil it by explaining
it. But there is an explanation, simple enough, the 21 of the 216 being nothing
but a badly engraved 4.
1834] 3

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

The men were mostly soldiers and clergymen. A few
one way or another, made names for themselves. Gabriel
Whistler of Combe, Sussex, in the sixteenth century, was so
good a friend to King's College, Cambridge, that his shield
is one of six worked into the wood-carving of the chapel ;
Anthony Whistler, poet, friend of Shenstone, belonged to the
Whitchurch family; Dr. Daniel Whistler (1619-1684), of
the Essex branch, was a Fellow of Merton, an original Fellow
of the Royal Society, a member and afterwards president of
the College of Physicians, the friend of Evelyn and Pepys.
Evelyn often met him in " select companie " at supper, and
once, he says, " Din'd at Dr. Whistler's at the Physicians
Colledge," and found him not only learned but " the most
facetious man in nature," and so, more than in name, the
legitimate ancestor of Whistler. Pepys, who also dined
and supped with him many times, pronounced him " good
company and a very ingenious man." He, however, fell
under a cloud with the officials of the College of Physicians,
and his portrait has been consigned to a back stairway of
the College in Pall Mall. In the seventeenth century, Ralph
Whistler, under the Salter's Company of London, was one
of the English colonisers of Ulster, and, to this day, the
ruins of " Whistler's Castle " stand on the shores of Lough
Neagh. Francis Whistler, under the Second Charter, was
one of the early settlers of Virginia. When Whistler saw
the name " Francis Whistler, Gentleman," in the Genesis
of the United States, he said to us, " that there was an ancestor,
with the hall-mark F.F.V. (First Families of Virginia), who
tickled my American snobbery, and washed out the taint
of Lowell."

The American Whistlers are descended directly from John
Whistler, of the Irish branch. In his youth, he ran away
from home and enlisted in the British army as a private,
and the legend is that Sir Kensington Whistler, an English

4 [1834

MAJOK GEORGE WASHINGTON WHISTLER
(WHISTLER'S FATHER)

THE WHISTLER FAMILY

cousin, an officer in the same regiment, objected to having
a relative in the ranks. John Whistler, therefore, was trans-
ferred to another regiment, in which he was colour-sergeant,
just starting for the American colonies to join Burgoyne's
army. He arrived in time to surrender at Saratoga, October
17, 1777. After this, he went back to England, received
his honourable discharge from the army, and later eloped
with Anna, daughter of Sir Edward Bishop, or Bischopp. He
liked what he had seen of the colonies and, with his wife,
returned and settled at Hagerstown, Maryland. He again
enlisted, this time in the United States army. He was
wounded in St. Glair's defeat by the Indians, November 4,
1791, rose to be captain in the First U.S. Infantry, with the
brevet rank of major and served in the war of 1812 against
Great Britain. In 1803 he was stationed at Detroit ; later
at Fort Dearborn, which he helped to build ; and Fort Wayne,
in what was then the North-West-Territory, later Indiana.
According to Mr. Eddy, Whistler once said to a visitor from
Chicago :

" Chicago, dear me, what a wonderful place ! I really ought
to visit it some day — for, you know, my grandfather founded
the city and my uncle was the last commander of Fort
Dearborn ! "

In 1815, upon the reduction of the army, Major John
Whistler was retired — two of his irons were already officers
carrying on the family tradition — and he was given the post
of military storekeeper at Newport, Kentucky, and then at
Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis. He died in 1817, at Belle-
fontaine, Missouri, leaving the reputation of a good linguist,
good musician, good soldier, good father. In his family
it is said of him that he " united firmness with tenderness "
and " impressed upon his children the importance of a faithful
and thorough performance of duties in whatever position
they should be placed."

1834] » 5

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Of Major Whistler's large family of fifteen children, three
sons are remembered as soldiers, and three daughters married
army officers. The sons were William, a colonel in the
United States army, who died at Newport, Kentucky, in
1863 ; John, a lieutenant, whose death was due to wounds
at the battle of Maguago, near Detroit, 1812 ; George
Washington, who rose to the rank of major — the most
distinguished of the three brothers and the father of James
Abbott McNeill Whistler.

George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800,
at Fort Wayne. His childhood was spent at the military
posts where his father was stationed ; he was educated
mostly at Newport, Kentucky ; and from Kentucky, when
he was a little over fourteen, he received his appointment to
the Military Academy, West Point. He remained there for
five years, graduating on July 1, 1819. From the rank of
second lieutenant, to which he was appointed in the First
Artillery, he rose to be first lieutenant in the Second Artillery.
This was in 1829. Four years afterwards, in 1833, with
the rank of major, he resigned his commission in the army.

At West Point he is remembered for his gaiety. Mr.
George L. Vose, his biographer, and others, tell stories that
might have been told of his son. One is of some breach of
discipline, for which he was made to bestride a gun on the
campus for a certain time. As he sat there, he saw, coming
towards him, the Miss Swift he was to marry before very long.
Out came his handkerchief, and, leaning over the gun, he
set to work cleaning it so carefully that he was " honoured,
not disgraced," in her eyes. He was " number one " in
drawing, and his wonderful playing on the flute won for him
the nickname " Pipes." After he left West Point, he served
on topographical duty, and for a few months he was assistant
professor at the Academy. Under Major Albert he was on
the Commission that traced the North- West Boundary

6 [1834

HOUSE IN WHICH WHISTLER WAS BORN, LOWELL, MASS.

OLD CORNER HOUSE, STONINGTON

ST. ANNE'S CHURCH, LOWELL, MASS.

THE WHISTLER FAMILY

between Lake Superior and the Lake of the Woods. There
was not much fighting for American officers of his generation.
But railroads were being built throughout the country, and
so few were the civil engineers available that West Point
graduates were allowed by Government to work for private
corporations. Major Whistler was engineer on the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, the Baltimore and Susquehanna and the
Paterson and Hudson River, now a part of the Erie Railroad.
For the Baltimore and Ohio he went to England in 1828 to
examine the English railway system. He was directing the
construction of the line from Stonington to Providence, an
extension of the Boston and Providence Railroad, when he
resigned to carry on his profession as a civil engineer.

In the meanwhile, he had been married twice. His first
wife was Mary Swift, daughter of Dr. Foster Swift, of the
U.S. Army. She left three children : George, who became
a well-known civil engineer ; Joseph, who died in youth ;
and Deborah, now Lady Haden. His second wife was Anna
Mathilda McNeill, daughter of Dr. Charles Donald McNeill
of Wilmington, North Carolina, and sister of William Gibbs
McNeill, a West Point classmate and a constant associate
in much of Major Whistler's engineering work. The McNeills
were descended from the McNeills of Skye, an offshoot from
the McNeills of Barra. Their chief, Donald, emigrated
with sixty of his clan to North Carolina in 1740, after the fall
of the Stuarts, to whom he and his people had always been
loyal. He bought land on Cape Fear river, and his estate
was known as Tweedside. Charles Donald McNeill was the
grandson of this Donald. Like many men of the family he
studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. During
the Revolutionary War his sympathies were with England
and he retired for a while to the West Indies. When the
war was over, he returned, and settled at Wilmington, North
Carolina. He was twice married : his second wife, Martha

1834] 7

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Kingsley, was the mother of Anna Mathilda McNeill, who
became Mrs. George Washington Whistler. The McNeills
were related by marriage to the Fairfaxes and other well-
known Virginia families. And so Whistler, on his mother's
side, was the southerner he loved to call himself.

In 1834, Major Whistler accepted the offer of the important
post of engineer to the Proprietors of Locks and Canals at
Lowell, and to this town, then scarcely more than a village,
he brought his family. There, in what is known as the Paul
Moody House in Worthen Street, Whistler was born, though
for other Lowell houses, as for other American towns, the
honour has been claimed ; but the city of Lowell has so
little doubt on the subject that it has purchased the Worthen
Street house for a museum, a Whistler Memorial. Two
years later, the second son, William Gibbs McNeill, was born.
In 1837, Major Whistler moved to Stonington, Connecticut,
his continual presence being needed there, and Miss Emma
W. Palmer and Mrs. Dr. Stanton, his wife's nieces, still
remember his " pleasant house on Main Street." It is said
that he had at this time a chaise fitted with car wheels in
which he and his family, when there were no trains, drove
«very Sunday on the tracks to church at Westerly ; also that
a locomotive named " Whistler " was in use on the road until
recently. His work was mainly on the Stonington Railroad,
but he was consulted in regard to many other new lines.
Among these was the Western Railroad of Massachusetts, for
which, with his brother-in-law, William Gibbs McNeill, he
was consulting engineer from 1836 to 1840. In 1840, he was
made chief engineer, and he removed to Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, where, with his family, he lived in what is now known
as the Ethan Chapin Homestead, on Chestnut Street, north
of Edward Street. A third son, Kirk Booth, who had been
born at Stonington in 1838, died at Springfield in 1842, and
here a fourth son, Charles Donald, was born in 1841.

S [1842

THE WHISTLER FAMILY

In 1842, the Emperor Nicholas I. of Russia sent a Com-
mission, under Colonel Melnikoff, round Europe and to
America to find the best methods and the best man to build
the railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and they chose
for this work the American civil engineer and the United
States officer, George Washington Whistler. The honour
was great and the salary large, $12,000 a year. He accepted,
and started for Russia in midsummer 1842. Until his plans
were settled, he left his family at Stonington, under the
charge of Dr. George E. Palmer, his brother-in-law.

The life of a child, for the first nine years or so, is not of
much interest to any one save his parents. An idea can
be formed of Whistler's training up to this period. His
father was a West Point man, with all that is fine in the
West Point tradition. Mrs. Whistler was " one of the saints
upon earth," as she has been called. But she was strict,
" puritanical," as uncompromising in matters of duty and
religion as if she had been born and bred in Puritan New
England. Dr. Whistler — Willie — often told his wife of
the dread with which he and Jimmie, when very little,
looked forward to Saturday afternoon, with its overhauling
of clothes, emptying of pockets, washing of heads, putting
away of toys, and general preparation for Sunday, when the
Bible was the only book they were allowed to read. Every
line Whistler wrote was evidence of his familiar knowledge
of the Bible. Ignorance of King James' version may be
the reason why so many literary critics have found fault
with his English.

Of the actual facts and incidents of Whistler's early child-
hood there are few to record. Mrs. Livermore, *' K. L.,"
who wrote to the Times (August 28, 1903) to settle the dispute
as to the place of Whistler's birth, lived many years in Lowell.
She was a great friend of the Whistlers, and was all her life
"Cousin Kate" to Whistler and his brother.- She was

1842] 9

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

fourteen years older than Whistler, and she could tell of his
baby beauty, so great that her father used to say " it was
enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds come out of his grave
and paint Jemmie * asleep." Mrs. Livermore dwelt especially
on the child's beautiful hands " which belong to so many of
the Whistlers — I attribute them to his Irish blood." When she
returned to Lowell in 1836, from the Manor School at York,
England, Mrs. Whistler's son, Willie, had just been born :

" As soon as Mrs. Whistler was strong enough she sent for me
to go and see her boy, and I did see her and her baby in bed !
and then I asked, ' Where is Jemmie, of whom I have heard so
much ? ' She replied, ' He was in the room a short time since,
and I think he must be here still.' So I went softly about the
room till I saw a very small form prostrate and at full length
on the shelf under the dressing-table, and I took hold of an arm
and a leg and placed him on my knee, and then said, ' What
were you doing, dear, under the table ? ' ' I'se drawrin',' and
in one very beautiful little hand he held the paper, in the other
the pencil."

The drawing of a duck, lent us by Mrs. Livermore, is
curiously firm and strong for the child of four he was when
he made it.

These memories, in their slightness, indicate the years
between the child's birth in 1834 and the year 1843, when
Major Whistler sent for his wife and children to join him in
Russia, and Whistler was just nine years old.

* In Whistler's childhood, he was called Jimmie, Jemmie, Jamie, James and
Jim, and we have used these names as we have found them in the letters written
to us and the books quoted.

CHAPTER II. IN RUSSIA. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE TO EIGHTEEN
FORTY-NINE

MRS. WHISTLER sailed from Boston in the Arcadia on
August 12, 1843, taking with her Deborah, Major
Whistler's only daughter (now Lady Haden), and the three
boys, James, William and Charles. George Whistler, Major
Whistler's eldest son, and her " good maid Mary " went
along to take care of them. The story of their journey
and their life in Russia is recorded in Mrs. Whistler's
journal.

They arrived at Liverpool on the 29th of the same month.
Mrs. Whistler's two half-sisters, Mrs. William Winstanley
and Miss Alicia McNeill, lived at Preston, and there they
stayed a fortnight. Then, after a few days in London, they
sailed for Hamburg.

The journey that followed explains why Major Whistler
was so much needed in Russia. There was no railroad from
Hamburg, and so they drove by carriage to Liibeck, by stage
to Travemiinde, where they took the steamer Alexandra for
St. Petersburg, and where George Whistler left them.
Between Travemiinde and Cronstadt, Charles, the youngest
child, fell fatally ill of sea-sickness, and died within a day.
There was just time to bury him at Cronstadt — temporarily,
he was afterwards buried at Stonington — and his death
saddened the long-looked-for meeting between Major Whistler
and his wife and children.

Mrs. Whistler objected to living in hotels and to boarding,

1843] H

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

and a house was found in the Galernaya. She did her best
to make it not only a " comfortable," but an American
home, for Major Whistler's attachment to his native land,
she said, was so strong as to be almost a religious sentiment.
Their food was American as far as could be managed, Ameri-
can holidays were kept as nearly as possible in American
fashion. Many of their friends were Americans. Major
Whistler was nominally, or technically, consulting engineer
to Colonel MelnikoS, but practically he was in charge of the
line, both in its construction and in its equipment, and
as the materials were supplied by the firm of Winans of
Baltimore, Mr. Winans and his partners, Mr. Harrison and
Mr. Eastwick of Philadelphia, with their families, were also
in Russia.

Mrs, Whistler's strictness did not mean an opposition to
all pleasure. At times she became afraid that her boys were
not " keeping to the straight and narrow way." There
were evenings of illuminations in St. Petersburg that put off
bedtime indefinitely ; there were afternoons of skating and
coasting ; Christmas gaieties, with Christmas dinners of
roast turkey and real pumpkin pie ; visits to American
friends ; parties at home, when the two boys " behaved like
gentlemen, and their father commended them upon it " ;
there were presents of guns from the father, returning from
long absences on the road and in Moscow ; there were
dancing lessons, which Jemmie would have done almost
anything rather than miss.

Whistler, as a boy, was exactly what those who knew him
as a man would expect : gay and bright, absorbed in his
work when that work was in any way related to art, brave
and fearless, selfish, if selfishness is another name for
ambition, considerate and kindly, above all to his mother.
The boy, like the man, was delightful to those who under-
stood him, " startling," " alarming," to those who did not.

12 [184S

IN RUSSIA

Mrs. Whistler's Journal soon becomes extremely interesting
as the following quotations show :

March 29 (1844). — " I must not omit recording our visiting
the Gastinnoi to-day in anticipation of Palm Sunday. Our two
boys were most excited, Jemmie's animation roused the wonder
of many, for even in crowds here such decorum and gravity
prevails that it must be surprising when there is any ebullition
of joy."

April 22 (1844). — " Jemmie is confined to his bed with a
mustard plaster on his throat ; he has been very poorly since
the thawing season commenced, soon becoming overheated,
takes cold ; when he complained of pain first in his shoulder,
then in his side, my fears of a return of last year's attack made
me tremble, and when I gaze upon his pale face sleeping, con-
trasted to Willie's round cheeks, my heart is full ; our dear
James said to me the other day, so touchingly, ' Oh, I am sorry
the Emperor ever asked father to come to Russia, but if I had
the boys here, I should not feel so impatient to get back to
Stonington,' yet I cannot think it the climate here affects his
health ; Willie never was as stout in his native land, and James
looks better than when we brought him here. At 8 o'clock I am
often at my reading or sewing without a candle, and I cannot
persuade James to put up his drawing and go to bed while it
is light."

The Journal shows that Whistler began as a boy to suffer
from the severe rheumatic attacks that weakened his heart
and caused his death. Major and Mrs. Whistler rented a
country house on the Peterhoff Road in the spring of 1844.
There is an account of a day spent at Tsarskoe Sel6, when
Colonel Todd, the American Minister to Russia, took them
to see the Catherine Palace :

May 6 (1844). — " Rode to the station, and took the cars upon
the only railroad in Russia, which took us the twenty versts to
the pretty town. It would be ungenerous in me to remark how
inferior the railroad, cars, etc., seemed to us Americans. The
boys were delighted with it all. Jemmie wished he could stay
to examine the fine pictures and know who painted them, but
1844] 13

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

as I returned through the grounds I asked him if he should wish
to be a grand duke and own it all for playgrounds : he decided
there could be no freedom with a footman at his heels."

July 1 (1844). — " ... I went with Willie to do some shopping
in the Nevski. He is rather less excitable than Jemmie, and
therefore more tractable. They each can make their wants
known in Russ., but I prefer this gentlest of my dear boys to go
with me. We had hardly reached home when a tremendous
shower came up, and Jemmie and a friend, who had been out in
a boat on a canal at the end of our avenue, got well drenched.
Just as we were seated at tea, a carriage drove up, and Mr. Miller
entered, introducing Sir William Allen, the great Scotch artist,
of whom we have heard lately, who has come to St. Petersburg
to revive on canvas some of the most striking events from the life
of Peter the Great. They had been to the Monastery to listen
to the chanting at Vespers in the Greek chapel. Mr. Miller con-
gratulated his companion on being in the nick of time for our
excellent home-made bread and fresh butter, and, above all, the
refreshment of a good cup of tea. His chat then turned upon
the subject of Sir William Allen's painting of Peter the Great
teaching the mujiks to make ships. This made Jemmie's eyes
express so much interest that his love for the art was discovered,
and Sir William must needs see his attempts. When my boys
had said good-night, the great artist remarked to me, ' Your
little boy has uncommon genius, but do not urge him beyond
his inclination.' I told him his gift had only been cultivated as
an amusement, and that I was obliged to interfere, or his appli-
cation would confine him more than we approved."

Of these attempts there remain few examples. One is
the portrait of his Aunt Alicia McNeill, who visited them
in Russia in 1844, sent to Mr. Palmer at Stonington, with
the inscription : " James to Aunt Kate." Mrs. Livermore
has said that in an excellent letter in French Jemmie
sent her from St. Petersburg when he was ten or eleven,
** he enclosed some pretty pen-and-ink drawings, each on a
separate bit of paper, and each surrounded by a frame of
his own designing." Whistler told us he could remember
wonderful things he had done during the years in Russia.
14 [1844

IN RUSSIA

Once, he said, in London with his father, he had not been
well, and he had been given a hot foot-bath, and he could
never forget how he sat looking at his foot, and then got his
paper and colours and set to work to make a study of it,
" and in Russia," he added, " I was always doing that sort
of thing."

July 4 (1844). — " I have given my boys holiday to celebrate
the Independence of their country. . . . This morning Jemmie
began relating anecdotes from the life of Charles XII. of Sweden,
and rather upbraided me that I could not let him do as that
monarch had done at seven years old — manage a horse ! I
should have been at a loss how to afford my boys a holiday,
with a military parade to-day, but there was an encampment
of cadets, about two estates off, and they went with Colonel
T.'s sons to see them."

July 10 (1844). — " A poem selected by my darling Jamie
and put under my plate at the breakfast-table, as a surprise on
his tenth birthday. I shall copy it, that he may be reminded of
his happy childhood, when perhaps his grateful mother is not
with him."

August 20 (1844). — " . . . Jemmie is writing a note to his
Swedish tutor on his birthday. Jemmie loves him sincerely and
gratefully. I suppose his partiality to this Swede makes him
espouse his country's cause and admire the qualities of Charles XII.
so greatly to the prejudice of Peter the Great. He has been
quite enthusiastic while reading the life of this king of Sweden
this summer, and too willing to excuse his errors."

August 23 (1844). — " I wish I could describe the gardens at
Peterhof , where we were invited to drive to-day. The fountains
are perhaps the finest in the world. The water descends in sheets
over steps, all the heathen deities presiding. Jemmie was
delighted with the figure of Samson tearing open the jaws of
the lion, from which ascends a jet d'eau one hundred feet. . . .
There are some fine pictures, but Peter's own paintings of the
feathered race ought to be most highly prized, though our Jemmie
was so saucy as to laugh at them."

August 28 (1844). — " I availed myself of Col. Todd's invitation

to visit Tsarskoe Sel6 to-day with Aunt Alicia, Deborah and the

two dear boys, who are always so delighted at these little

1844] , 15

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

excursions. . . . My little Jemmie's heart was made sad by
discovering swords which had been taken in the battle between
Peter and Charles XII., for he knew, from their rich hilts set in
pearls and precious stones, that they must have belonged to
noble Swedes. ' Oh ! ' he exclaimed, * I'd rather have one of
these than all the other things in the armoury ! How beautiful
they are ! ' . . . I was somewhat annoyed that Col. Todd had
deemed it necessary, to entertain us, to have a dinner party for us.
One was a Russian general who spoke English, but the captain
of the Chevalier Guards, who sat next Deborah, was the greatest
acquisition to the party, he had so much vivacity and politeness.
. . . The colonel proposed the Emperor's health in champagne,
which not even the Russian general, who declined wine, could
refuse, and even I put my glass to my lips, which so encouraged
my little boys that they presented their glasses to be filled, and,
forgetting at their little side-table the guests at ours, called out
aloud, ' Sante d, VEmpereur ! ' The captain clapped his hands
with delight, and afterwards addressed them in French. All
at the table laughed and called the boys ' Bons sujets.' "

They were in St. Petersburg again in September, preparing
their Christmas gifts for America. Whistler, sending one
to his cousin, Amos Palmer, wrote with it a letter to say, in
an outburst of patriotism, that the English were going to
America to be licked by the Yankees : it was at the time
of the threatened disagreement over the Oregon Territory.
In another letter from Russia, he gives the Fourth of July
as his birthday.

Ash Wednesday (1845). — " I avail myself of this Lenten
season to have my boys every morning before breakfast recite a
verse from the Psalms, and I, who wish to encourage them, am
ready with my response. How very thankful I shall be when
the weather moderates so that Jemmie's long imprisonment may
end, and Willie have his dear brother with him in the skating
grounds and ice-hills. Here comes my good boy Jemmie now,
with his history in hand, to read to me, as he does every afternoon,
as we fear they may lose their own language in other tongues,
and thus I gain a half-hour's enjoyment by hearing them read
daily."

April 5 (1845). — " Our boys have left the breakfast-table
16 [1845

IN RUSSIA

before 8 o'clock to trundle their new hoops on the Quai with
their governess, and have brought home such bright red cheeks and
buoyant spirits to enter the schoolroom with and to gladden my
eyes. Jemmie began his course of drawing lessons at the Academy
of Fine Arts just on the opposite side of the Neva, exactly
fronting my bedroom window. He is entered at the second room.
There are two higher, and he fears he shall not reach them,
because the officer who is still to continue his private lesson at
home is a pupil himself in the highest, and Jemmie looks up to
him with all the reverence an artist merits. He seems greatly
to enjoy going to his class, and yesterday had to go by the bridge
on account of the ice, and felt very important when he told me
he had to give the Isvdshtclok 15 copecks silver instead of 10."*

On May 14 (1845) there was a review of troops in St. Peters-
burg, and a window in the Prince of Oldenburg's palace
overlooking the Champ de Mars was reserved for the Whistlers :

" Jemmie's eagerness to attain all his desires for information
and his fearlessness often makes him offend, and it makes him
appear less amiable than he really is. The officers, however,
seemed to find amusement in his remarks in French or English
as they accosted him. They were soon informed of his military
ardour and that he hoped to serve his country. England ? No,
indeed ! Russia, then ? No, no, America, of course ! "

" On September 18, 1845, the new tutor, M. Lamartine, was
installed, and the freedom with which the boys chatted with him
soon made me comfortable, for Jemmie and he are both such
talkers. Great has been the demand for patience on his part,
until they were broken of their wild pranks in the school and
street, for the Russian lads are drilled from infancy to politeness
and submission."

May 2 (1846). — " The boys are in the school-room now,
reading the Roman history in French to M. Lamartine, promising

* The official record of Whistler as an art student in St. Petersburg has been
sent us from the Imperial Academy of Science, through the kind intervention
of the American Ambassador to Russia, the Hon. Mr. Meyer. In the Archives
of the Imperial Academy of Science there is a " List of Scholars of the Imperial
Academy of Fine Arts," and in this and the " Class Journal of the Inspector "
for 1845, James Whistler is entered as " belonging to the drawing class, heads
from Nature." In 1846 he was, on March 2, examined and passed as " first "
in his class, his number being 28. From 1845 to 1849, Professor Vistelious and
Voivov were the masters in the life class.
1846] I : B 17

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

themselves the pleasure of reviewing the pictures at the Academy
of Fine Arts at noon, which they have enjoyed almost every day
this week. It is the Triennial Exhibition and we like them to
become familiar with the subjects of the modern artists, and to
James especially it is the greatest treat we could offer. I went last
Wednesday with Whistler and was highly gratified. I should
like to take some of the Russian scenes so faithfully portrayed to
show in my native land. My James had described a boy's portrait
said to be his likeness, and although the eyes were black and the
curls darker, we found it so like him, that his father said he
would be glad to buy it, but its frame would only correspond
with the furniture of a palace. The boy is taken in a white shirt
with crimped frill, open at the throat ; it is half-length and no
other garment could show off the glow of the brunette complexion
so finely."

May 30 (1846). — " Aunt Kate sent Jamie some marbles which
have delighted his heart, and I fear he will read less than ever,
loving play as he does. . . . Yesterday the Empress was
welcomed back to St. Petersburg. Last night the illumination
which my boys have been eagerly expecting took place. When
at 10.30 they came in, Jamie expressed such an eager desire that
I would allow him to be my escort just to take a peep at the
Nevski that I could not deny him. The effect of the light from
Vasili Ostrow was very beautiful, and as we drove along the Quai,
the flowers and decorations of large mansions were, I thought,
even more tasteful. We had to fall into a line of carriages in the
Isaac Square to enter that Broadway, and just then a shout from
the populace announced to us that the Empress was passing. I
was terrified lest the poles of their carriages should run into our
backs, or that some horses might take fright or bite us, we were
so close, but Jamie laughed heartily and aloud at my timidity.
He behaved like a man. With one arm he guarded me, and with
the other kept the animals at a proper distance ; and, I must
confess, brilliant as the spectacle was, my great pleasure was
derived from the conduct of my dear and manly boy."

July 7 (1846). — " This is the Empress's fiftieth anniversary
and the Court are all at Peterhof. My two boys found much
amusement in propelling themselves on the drawbridge, to and
from the fancy island in the pond at Mrs. G.'s, where we went to
spend the day ; they find it such a treat to be in the country, and
just run wild, chasing butterflies and picking the wild flowers so
18 [1846

IN RUSSIA

abundant. But nothing gave them so much pleasure as their
4th July, spent with their little American friends at Alexandrovsky,
the Eastwicks ; the fireworks, percussion caps, muskets, horseback
riding, &c., make them think it the most delightful place in Russia.
In some way James caught cold, and his throat was so inflamed
that leeches were applied, and he has been in consequence con-
fined to his room. Our lazy dominie has taken a vacation, so I
have had the boys on my hands entirely. We spend our mornings
in reading, drawing, &c. Then the boys take their row with
good John across the Neva, to the morning bath, and in the cool
of the afternoon a drive to the island or a range in the summer
gardens, or a row on the river."

July 27 (1846). — " Last Wednesday, they had another long
day in the country, and got themselves into much mischief.
They had at last broken the ropes of the drawbridge, by which
it was drawn to and from the island, and there were my wild boys
prisoners on it. I thought it best for them to remain so, as they
were so unruly, but the good-natured dominie was pressed into
their service, and swimming to their rescue, ere I could interfere ;
Jemmie was so drenched by his efforts that dear Mrs. R. took
him away to her room to coax him to lie down awhile and to rub
him dry, lest his sore throat return to tell a tale of disobedience.
. . . On Thursday, there was another grand celebration of the
birthday of the Grand Duchess Olga. I gladly gave Mary per-
mission to take the boys in our carriage, while I stayed at home
with baby — they were gone so long that I grew anxious about
them, but finally they arrived very tired, and poor Mary said she
never wanted to go in such a crowd again. James had protected
her as well as he was able, but she was glad to get home safely.
The boys, however, enjoyed it immensely, as they saw all the
Imperial family within arm's length, as they alighted from their
pony chaises to enter the New Palace. . . . We were invited to
go to the New Palace, and went immediately to the apartment
occupied by his lamented daughter. On one side is the lovely
picture painted by Buloff, so like her in life and health, though
taken after death, as representing her spirit passing upwards to
the palace above the blue sky. She wears her Imperial robes,
with a crown on her head ; at the back of the crown is a halo of
glory — the stars surround her as she passes through them. No
wonder James should have thought this picture the most interest-
ing of all the works of art around us."
1 846] 19

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

In the autumn of 1846, Major Whistler
" placed the boys, as boarders, at Monsr Jourdan's school. My
dear boys almost daily exchange billet-doux with mother, since
their absence of a week at a time from home. James reported
everything ' first-rate,' even to brown bread and salt for breakfast,
and greens for dinner, and both f orebore to speak of home-sickness,
and welcome indeed were they on their first Saturday at home,
when they opened the front door, and called ' Mother, Mother ! '
as they rushed in all in a glow, and they looked almost handsome
in their new round black cloth caps, set to one side of their cropped
heads, and the tight school uniform of grey trousers and black
jacket makes them appear taller and straighter ; Jamie found
the new suit too tight for his drawing lesson, so he sacrificed
vanity to comfort, and was not diverted from his two hours'
drawing by the other boys' frolics, which argues well for his deter-
mination to improve, as he promised his father. How I enjoyed
having them back and listening to all their chat about their school
— they 'seemed to enjoy their nice home tea. When it came time
for them to go back, Willie broke down and told me all he had
suffered from home-sickness, and when I talked to my more
manly James, I unfortunately said, ' You do not know what
he feels.' Then Jamie's wounded love melted him into tears,
as he said, ' Oh ! mother, you think I don't miss being away from
home ! ' he brushed away the shower with the back of his hand
as if he was afraid of being seen weeping. Dear boys, may
they never miss me as I miss them ! " *

November 14 (1846). — " Jamie was kept in until night last
Saturday, and made to write a given portion of French over
twenty-five times as a punishment for stopping to talk to a class-
mate after their recitation, instead of marching back to his seat
according to order — poor fellow, it was rather severe when he had
looked only for rewards during the week ; as he had not had one
mark of disapprobation in all that time, and was so much elated
by his number of good balls for perfect recitations that he forgot
disobedience of orders is a capital offence under military discipline.
He lost his drawing lesson, and made us all unhappy at home.
We tried to keep his dinner hot, but his appetite had forsaken
him, although only having eaten a penny roll since breakfast —
he dashed the tears of vexation from his eyes at losing his drawing
* Shortly after this, Mrs. Whistler's youngest son, John Bouttatz, bora in the

summer of 1845, died, and his body was sent for burial to Stonington.

20 [1846

IN RUSSIA

lesson, but his cheerfulness was soon restored and we had our
usual pleasant evening."

January 23 (1847). — " It is three weeks this afternoon since
the dear boys came home from school to sp nd the Russian
Christmas and holidays, and it seems not probable that they shall
return again to Mons. Jourdan's this winter. James was droop-
ing from the close confinement, and for two days was confined
to his bed. Then Willie was taken. They are quite recovered
now, and skate almost daily on the Neva, and Jamie often crosses
on the ice to the Academy of Fine Arts to spend an hour or two.
. . . Jamie was taken ill with a rheumatic attack soon after
this, and I have had my hands full, for he has suffered much with
pain and weariness, but he is gradually convalescing, and to-day,
January 30, he was able to walk across the floor ; he has been
allowed to amuse himself with his pencil, while I read to him ;
he has not taken a dose of medicine during the attack, but great
care was necessary in his diet."

February 27 (1847). — " Never shall I cease to record with deep
gratitude dear Jamie's unmurmuring submission these last six
weeks. He still cannot wear jacket or trousers, as the blistering
still continues on his chest. What a blessing is such a contented
temper as his, so grateful for every kindness, and rarely complains.
He is now enjoying a huge volume of Hogarth's engravings, so
famous in the Gallery of Artists. We put the immense book
on the bed, and draw the great easy-chair close up, so that he can
feast upon it without fatigue. He said, while so engaged
yesterday, ' Oh, how I wish I were well, I want so to show these
engravings to my drawing-master, it is not every one who has a
chance of seeing Hogarth's own engravings of his originals,' and
then added, in his own happy way, ' and if I had not been ill,
mother, perhaps no one would have thought of showing them to
me.' "

From this time until his death, Whistler always believed
Hogarth to be the greatest English artist who ever lived
and he seldom lost an opportunity of saying so. The long
attack of illness in 1847 is therefore memorable as the begin-
ning of his love of Hogarth which became an article of
faith with him, and also as a proof of his early and right
appreciation of great art.

1847] 21

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

March 23 (1847). — " After many postponements, the Emperor
finally inspected the Railroad department, the heritier, the Grand
Duke Constantine, and many of the Court were invited. The
day after his visit to the works, the Court held a levee, my husband
was invited ; when he arrived was summoned to a private
audience in an inner apartment, the Emperor met him with
marked kindness, kissed him on each side his face, and hung an
ornament suspended by a scarlet ribbon around his neck, saying
the Emperor thus conferred upon him the Order of St. Anne.
Whistler, as such honours are new to Republicans, was some-
what abashed, but when he returned with the Court to the
large circle in the outer room, he was congratulated by the
officers generally."

It is said that Major Whistler had been asked to wear the
Russian uniform, but had refused. The decoration, however,
he could not decline.

Whistler told us, as have others, that the Emperor was
most impressed with the way Major Whistler met every
difficulty and emergency. When he asked the Czar how the
line should be built, showing him the map of the country
between St. Petersburg and Moscow, the Czar, as everybody
knows, took a ruler, drew a straight line from one city to the
other, ignoring everything in the way : and the railroad
virtually follows that line to-day. But, everybody does not
know that when the rolling-stock was ready, it was found
that it had been made of a different gauge from the rails.
The people who supplied it demanded to be paid. Major
Whistler not only refused, but burnt it, and took the entire
responsibility.

Mrs. Whistler and the three children spent the summer
of 1847 in England, where Major Whistler joined them. They
visited their relations, and before their return, the daughter,
Deborah, was married. She had met Seymour Haden, then
a young physician, while she was staying with her aunts
and their friends, the Chapmans, at Preston. Whistler told
us that his father came to England especially to see Haden,

22 [1847

IN RUSSIA

and Whistler was with his father when they met. Haden
was " like a schoolmaster," patted him on the shoulder, and
said it was high time the boy went to school.

The wedding was on October 10, 1847 : " Deborah's
wedding-day," Mrs. Whistler wrote in her Journal. " Bright
and pleasant. James the only groomsman, and very proud
of the honour."

The next summer (1848) Mrs. Whistler went back to
England. Jamie had had another of his bad attacks of
rheumatic fever, cholera broke out in St. Petersburg, and
at its very name, she wrote, her heart failed her. On July 6
she was on board the Camilla, bound for London, with her
boys. Jamie was better already, and anxious to take a
portrait of a young Hindu aboard.

July 22 (1848).— " Shanklin, Me of Wight. This is Willie's
twelfth birthday and has been devoted to his pleasure, and poor
Jamie was envious that he could not bathe with us in the beautiful
summer sea, for the doctors think the bracing air as much as he
can bear, we three had a seaside ramble and then returned to
rest at our cottage. I plied the needle, while my boys amused
themselves, Willie in making wax flowers, and Jemmie in
drawing."

Monday [no date]. — " This day being especially fine, Mrs. P.
took the boys on a pedestrian excursion along the shore to Culver
Cliffs. In the hope that Jamie might finish his sketch of Cook's
Castle, we started the next day after an early dinner, taking a
donkey with us for fear of fatigue, for James or Deborah. . . .
We availed ourselves of a lovely bright morning to take a drive,
&aid to be the most charming in England along the south coast
of the isle as far as ' Black Gang Chine, where we alighted at
the inn. Jamie flew off like a sea fowl, his sketch-book in hand,
and when I finally found him, he was seated on the red sandy
beach, down, down, down, where it was with difficulty Willie
and I followed him. He was attempting the sketch of the
waterfall and cavern up the side of the precipice ; he came back
later, glowing with the exercise of climbing, with sketch-book in
hand, and laughing at being ' Jacky last,' as we were all assembled
for our drive back."
1848] 23

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Jamie did not return with Mrs. Whistler. It was feared
his health would not stand another Russian winter, and
he was left in England. He lived with his sister and her
husband in London at 62 Sloane Street, and studied with a
clergyman, who had but one other pupil. It was then that
Boxall, commissioned by Major Whistler, painted his portrait
— " when he was fourteen years old — when he was living
with us in Sloane Street," Mrs. Thynne, his niece, writes to
us. And it was then he began to make London friends.
From Mr. Alan S. Cole we have this memorandum : " Whistler
as early as 1849, was staying with the Hadens in Sloane Street,
and went to one or two children's parties given by the
old Dilkes. To these also went my elder sisters and Miss
Thackeray, and so met Jimmy. Seymour Haden was our
family doctor — with whose family ours was intimate — very
much on account of the early relations between my father,
his brothers and Seymour Haden, dating from school-days
at Christ's Hospital."

Major Whistler, through the summer of 1848, continued
his regular inspections of the railroad, though cholera raged.
In November he had a bad attack. He recovered, but his
health was shaken. Letting neither illness nor weakness
interfere with his work, he overtaxed his strength, and on
August 9, 1849, he died : the immediate cause heart trouble,
which his son inherited from him. He had been employed
or consulted in other important undertakings : the iron
roof of the Riding House at St. Petersburg and the iron
bridge over the Neva, the improvement of the Dvina at
Archangel, the fortifications and Naval Arsenal and Docks
at Cronstadt. Major Whistler is buried in Evergreen Cemetery,
Stonington, where three of his sons have their graves. There
is a monument erected to his memory by his friends and
fellow officers in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn.

The Emperor suggested, Whistler always said, that the
24 [1849

IN RUSSIA

two boys should be brought up in the school for the pages
of the Court. But Mrs. Whistler determined to take them
to their native land, and the Emperor sent her in his private
barge as far as the Baltic. She went to the Hadens in
Sloane Street, where she found Jamie grown tall and
strong. One event in London that helped them to forget
for a moment their sorrow was the exhibition at the Royal
Academy (1849), then in Trafalgar Square, of BoxalPs portrait
of Whistler, which they went to see. A short visit to Preston
followed, the two boys carried off by " kind Aunt Alicia "
to Edinburgh and Glasgow, and at last they all met at
Liverpool in August. Mrs. Whistler was undecided between
steamer and sailing-packet, the necessity of economy being
somewhat urgent on her present income of fifteen hundred
dollars a year. By the advice of George Whistler and friends,
she took the steamer America, and on July 29, 1849, they
left Liverpool for New York, where they arrived on August 9,
at once taking boat for Stonington.

AUNT KATE

1849]

CHAPTER III. SCHOOL-DAYS IN
POMFRET. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FORTY-
NINE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-ONE

" rilHE boys were brought up like little princes until after
J- their father's death, which changed everything,"
Miss Emma W. Palmer, their cousin, writes us. Major
Whistler's salary was large, so were his expenses ; we have
never heard that there was a pension. He left his family
poor : the income of twelve thousand dollars reduced to
fifteen hundred.

For her own sake, Mrs. Whistler would have preferred to
stay at Stonington. For that of her two sons, she settled
at Pomfret, Connecticut, where there was a good school,
Christ Church Hall. The principal, Rev. Dr. Roswell Park,
was a West Point man and like Major Whistler, an engineer,
before he became a minister and school teacher. At Pomfret,
as at St. Petersburg, Mrs. Whistler busied herself at once to
make a home for herself and her children. She could not
find, or afford, anything more luxurious than part of an old
farmhouse and, in Connecticut, as in Russia, winter is severe.
She felt very keenly the discomforts of the new life for her
boys, but she spared them nothing of the old discipline. On
her first Christmas Day there, she wrote to her mother that
she had kept them busy all morning bringing in wood for the
fire and listing the draughty doors, though, as a concession
to the holiday, she allowed them to lighten their task by
hanging up evergreens and to sweeten it with " Stuart's
Candy." Part of their morning's duty at other times was,
26 [1849

THE TWO BROTHERS

(From a Daguerreotype)

SCHOOL-DAYS IN POMFRET

after a snowstorm, to shovel a path from the house to the
pig-pen and to feed the pig, even if it sent them back with
their hands blue and cold and their feet frost-bitten. While
they were thus hardened physically, they were not permitted
to neglect their studies. Jimmie was still an " excitable
spirit with little perseverance," she wrote to her friends at
Alexandrovsky ; however, she would not faint but labour, she
said, she urged him on daily, and she " could see already his
exertions to overcome habits of indolence." The Scripture
studies were continued, and the two boys were made to recite
a verse every morning before breakfast. Miss Palmer, who
often visited her cousins in the old Pomfret farmhouse
and who was their schoolmate during the winter of 1850,
remembers above all, that Mrs. Whistler " was very strict
with them."

Miss Palmer describes Whistler at this period as

" tall and slight with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft
brown curls, one lock of which fell over his forehead. . . . He
had a somewhat foreign appearance and manner, which, aided
by his natural abilities, made him very charming even at that
age. . . . He was one of the sweetest, loveliest boys I ever
met, and was a great favourite."

The deepest impression he seems to have left on those
who knew him at Pomfret was of his talents as a draughtsman,
though his fame afterwards may have strengthened and
coloured this impression in their memory. He is said to
have been always drawing : at times caricatures and comic
subjects, at others, illustrations to the books he read, or
portraits of his friends, or the Pomfret landscape. Many
of his sketches have been preserved, so that their actual
merit is not a mere question of hearsay. Some were sent
recently to the Buffalo Art Gallery by Miss Park, daughter
of Dr. Roswell Park. One is owned by Mrs. Louise
Chandler Moulton, who was also one of his schoolmates.

1 850] 27

Whistler told us how he used to walk to school with her,
carrying her books and basket, and she writes us that he
" was very attentive and kind." She also dwells on his
great charm, which, " from the beginning, every one who
saw him recognised," and his gaiety.

" He was full of fun in those days. The master of the school —
Rev. Dr. Roswell Park — was one of the stifiFest and most precise
of clergymen, and dressed the part most punctiliously. One day
Whistler came to school with a high, stiff collar, and a tie or stock
precisely copied from Dr. Park's. Of course the school-room was
full of suppressed laughter. The reverend gentleman was very
angry, but he could hardly take open notice of an offence of that
sort. So he bottled up his wrath ; but when ' Jimmy ' — as we
used to call him in those schooldays — gave him some trifling cause
of offence, the Rev. Dr. went for him with a ferrule. The school
was in two divisions — the girls sitting on one side of the large
hall, .and the boys on the other. Jimmy (pursued by the Dr.
and the ferrule) went round back of the girls' row, and threw
himself down on the floor, and the Dr. followed him and
whacked him, more, I think, to Jimmy's amusement than to his
discomfort."

Mrs. Moulton has further recollections of the maps he
drew in geography class, which " were at once the pride and
the envy of all the rest of us — they were so perfect, so delicate,
so exquisitely dainty in workmanship." He gave her a
number of drawings, all lost except one, in sepia, called The
Light at the Door, which she lent to the Whistler Memorial
Exhibition at Boston, 1904.

Other drawings done at Pomfret were in the same exhibi-
tion. Twenty-two in black and white and water-colour
were lent by Dr. Samuel Hammond, whose father was another
schoolmate of Whistler's. They suggest no small acquaint-
ance with the French illustrators of the day. To the
London Memorial Exhibition, 1905, Mrs. William Whistler
sent two water-colours of this period and a pen drawing :
A School House on Fire, Sam Weller's Lodging in the Fleet

28 [1850

Counsel of V*'

•r

*£•'.;•>

-

.

DRAWINGS MADE AT POMFKET

SCHOOL-DAYS IN POMFRET

Prison, and Benedictine Monks. Many more, no doubt,
could be traced. But the early work of Whistler, which
we have seen, does not strike us as remarkable. It has its
historic importance, but shows no more evidence of genius
than the early work of any other great artist.

1850]

CHAPTER IV. WEST POINT. THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-FOUR

THOUGH Whistler's mother took pride and pleasure in
his drawing, she did not see in art a career for him.
He inherited a profession more distinguished in her eyes.
Many Whistlers and McNeills had been soldiers. West
Point had made of them the men — the Americans — they
were ; West Point must do the same for him. Through
the influence of George Whistler with Daniel Webster, it is
said, his appointment as cadet At Large was obtained from
President Fillmore, and on July 1, 1851, after Whistler had
been two years at the Pomfret school, within ten days
of his seventeenth birthday, he entered the United States
Military Academy at West Point, where General Robert E.
Lee was Commandant.

Miss Palmer thinks he went against his will, though he
never regretted having gone. He was not made for the army,
any more than Giotto for Tuscan pastures or Corot for a
Paris shop. It was reasonable that his family should try
to make him a soldier ; it was inevitable that they should
fail. But his three years at West Point were an experience
he would not have missed.

Officially, the experiment was disastrous. The record
sent to us from West Point by Colonel C. W. Lamed is
meagre, because, as Whistler did not graduate, his biography
is not in the Cullum Registry of Graduates, nor in the gradua-
ting records of the Adjutant's Office.
30 [1851

WEST POINT

" He entered July 1, 1851, under the name of James A. (Abbot)
Whistler ; aged at the time sixteen years and eleven months.
He was appointed At Large and his place of residence was in
Pomfret, Windham Co., Connecticut. At the end of his second
year's course, in 1853, he was absent with leave on account
of ill health. On June 16, 1854, he was discharged from the
Academy for deficiency in chemistry. At that time he stood
at the head of his class in drawing and No. 39 in philosophy,
the total number in the class being 43. He recorded his place
of birth as Massachusetts."

The Professor of Drawing at the time was Robert W. Weir,
who always held Whistler in high esteem. Mr. J. Alden Weir,
his son, writes us :

" I remember, as a boy, my father showing me his work, which
at that time hung in what was known as the Gallery of the
Drawing Academy. There were about ten works by him framed.
From the start he showed evidences of a talent which later
proved to be unique in those fine and rare qualities, hard to be
understood by the majority."

Brigadier-General Alexander S. Webb, one of Whistler's
class-mates, who for long sat next him in the drawing-school,
told a story of master and pupil to Mr. Gustave Kobbe" :

" In the art class one day, while Whistler was busy over an
India ink drawing of a French peasant girl, Weir walked, as
usual, from desk to desk, examining the pupils' work. After
looking over Whistler's shoulder he stepped back to his own desk
filled his brush with India ink (General Webb says he can see
him now, rubbing the colour on a plate before ' loading ') and
approached Whistler with a view of correcting some of the lines
in the latter's drawing. When Whistler saw him coming, he
raised his hands as if to ward off the strokes of his brush and
called out, * Oh, don't sir, don't ! You'll spoil it ! '"

Mr. William M. Chase, who read, or heard, the story, says
that he told it to Whistler and asked if there was any truth
in it ? " Well, you know, he would have ! " was Whistler's
answer. And the best part of it all is that Professor Weir
understood. He is reported to have said nothing, but,
1854] 31

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

smiling, to have let the drawing go unconnected. He was
not always so forbearing, however, as Colonel Larned explains :
" I have here two drawings made by Whistler in his course of
instruction in drawing, one of which is a water-colour copy of a
coloured print, without special merit or interest, and evidently
much touched up by Professor Weir, as was his wont ; another,
a pen-and-ink copy taken from a coloured print, quite brilliant
and masterful in execution, which I presented to the officers' mess.
I do not set much stock by the coloured sketch, for the reason
that it bears the ear-marks all over it of Weir's retouching finish.
It was his habit to touch up all water-colour efforts of the cadets
for the examination exhibition, and I don't believe Whistler at
that time had any such facility in colour work as is indicated in the
touching-up in this drawing. With my knowledge of my prede-
cessor's universal practice in this regard, in which we instructors
followed suit to the best of our ability, I have always been sus-
picious of its integrity. At the same time Whistler was head in
drawing, and it may be that Weir forbore in his case and allowed
it to stand. The pen and ink, however, must have been his own
interpretation of a coloured lithograph, and shows such facility
that it makes me hesitate regarding my libel of the other.

" Whistler did another water-colour of a monk seated at a table
by a window writing. This is also a copy of an old print which
was used by Weir, with the others, through successive classes.

I think it was who saw the thing and wrote a lot of tommy-rot

and hifalutin about its subjective qualities, and Whistler's
satiric genius, and his introduction in the monk's face of that of
his room-mate, and a whole lot of esoteric subtleties, assuming
it to have been an original production. As a matter of fact, I
have copies of the same thing by cadets in my souvenir gallery, all
touched up by Weir, and I fancy about as good as Whistler's."
Of these two West Point drawings, copies probably of
lithographs by Nash or Haghe, only one gives more promise
than the earlier Pomfret performances. The water-colour
is of no account at all. The pen drawing has in it the begin-
ning of the handling of his etchings.*

* Five drawings, four of An Hour in the Life of a Cadet in pen-and-ink and
one of An Encampment in wash, have lately been found at West Point. The
Cadet drawings are far the best of his early work that we have seen and we
reproduce them.
32 [1854

^"OTTMK •• >> »• w , ^x. -

,

DRAWING MADK AT WEST POINT

(fV>y>y o/"a Print)

WEST POINT

Of his other studies there is little to record except his
failure. In his third year he was found deficient in chemistry,
and we give Colonel's Larned's account of the incident :

" Whistler said : ' Had silicon been a gas, I would have been
a major-general.' He was called up for examination on the
subject of chemistry, which also covered the studies of mineralogy
and geology, and given silicon to discuss. When called upon to
recite, he started : ' I am required to discuss the subject of
silicon. Silicon is a gas.' ' That will do, Mr. Whistler,' and
he retired quickly to private life."

Another story is of an examination in history. " What ! "
said his examiner, " you do not know the date of the Battle
of Buena Vista ? Suppose you were to go out to dinner and
the company began to talk of the Mexican War, and you,
a West Point man, were asked the date of the battle. What
would you do ? " " Do," said Whistler, " why, I should
refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things
at dinner ! "

Whistler's horsemanship is said to have been hardly better
than his chemistry. It was not wholly unusual, according
to General Webb, for Whistler at cavalry drill to go sliding
over his horse's head. On such occasions, Major Sackett,
then in command, would call out : " Mr. Whistler, aren't
you a little ahead of the squad ? " According to Whistler's
version to us, Major Sackett's remark was : " Mr. Whistler
I am pleased to see you for once at the head of your class ! "
*' But I did it gracefully," Whistler always insisted. There
are traditions of his fall when trotting in his first mounted
drill, and the astonishment of the dragoon who ran to carry
him off to hospital, on his rising unhurt with the one com-
plaint that he didn't " see how any man could keep a horse
for amusement." Once Whistler had to ride a difficult horse
called " Quaker." " Dragoon, what horse is this ? "
" Quaker," said the soldier. " Well, he's no friend ! " said
Whistler.
1854] i : c 33

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

His observance of the regulations was often as bad as his
horsemanship, and his excuses for it were worse. General
Ruggles, a class-mate, tells of the discovery of a pair of boots
which were against the regulation, and of his writing a long
explanation, winding up with the argument that, as this
demerit added but a little to the whole number, " what
boots it ? "

General Langdon writes us :

" The widow of a Colonel Thompson occupied a set of officer's
quarter's at the ' Point,' and, to eke out her slender pension, had
been allowed to take ten or twelve cadets to board, furnishing
meals only. Very soon after his admission to the Academy,
Whistler discovered that the fare of the cadets was not up to his
delicate taste, and he applied for permission to take his meale
at Mrs. Thompson's. Now, though her house was in the row of
the officers' quarters and the nearest to the cadet barracks, being
only a few steps distant, it was ' off cadet limits ' except for the
boarders there when at their meals. One balmy evening, long
after supper, our friend Whistler was discovered by Mrs. Thompson,
leaning over her rear fence, engaged in an animated discourse in
the French language with her pretty French maid. Mrs. Thomp-
son, in a severe tone, inquired his business there at that hour.
Whistler promptly replied : * I am looking for my cat ! ' It
was well known that cadets were not allowed to keep cats, dogs or
other pets. The absurdity of Whistler's answer deprived it of all
turpitude, but the old lady, between amazement and anger, nearly
had a fit. As soon as she could recover her powers of speech,
she gasped out : ' Young man, go 'way ! ' and cut short the
harmless confab by sending the pretty maid indoors. Of course,
poor Whistler took no more meals at Mrs. Thompson's, but was,
instead, ordered to take his nourishment in the cadet's mess hall,
where the fare in those days was far from being inviting."

Sir Rennell Rodd tells us another story that he had from
Whistler :

" The cadets were out early one morning, engaged in surveying
round the college. It was very cold and raw, and Jimmy, finding
a line of deep ditch through which he could make a retiring move-
ment, got back into college and his warm quarters unperceived.

34

WEST POINT

By an unfortunate accident a roll-call was held that morning
Cadet Whistler not being present, a report was drawn up sending
in his name to the commanding officer for being absent from
parade without the knowledge or permission of his instructor ;
the report was shown him, and he said to the military instructor :
' Have I your permission to speak ? ' ' Speak on, Cadet Whistler.'
* You have reported me, sir, for being absent from parade without
the knowledge or permission of my instructor — well, now, if
I was absent without your knowledge or permission, how did
you know I was absent ? ' They got into terms after that, and
the incident was closed."

The stories about Whistler at West Point might be multi-
plied indefinitely. Many have been already published.
Those we tell suffice to show that at the Military Academy,
as wherever he passed, the impression he left was vivid.
We have a stronger proof of this in the letters written
to us by several officers who were Whistler's fellow
cadets. It is half a century since they and Whistler
studied together, and, with one exception, they never
saw him in later years, yet their memory of him is still
fresh. General D. McN. Gregg and General C. B. Comstock,
his classmates, General Loomis L. Langdon, General Henry
L. Abbot, General Oliver Otis Howard, General G. W. C.
Lee, in the class before his, have all sent us recollec-
tions of Whistler at West Point. Their letters are too
valuable not to give in full, but too long to insert here, and
we reserve them therefore for an Appendix. The great
interest is to find that these distinguished officers agree
thoroughly in their affection for Whistler, their appre-
ciation of his gaiety and charm, and their respect for the
drawings he made even in those early days. He was " a
vivacious and likeable little fellow," as General Comstock
describes him, and we get a picture of him, short and slight,
not over military in his bearing, somewhat foreign in appear-
ance, near-sighted, and with thick black curls that won him
the name of " Curly " among the Cadets. His old friends
1854] 35

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

remember his wit, his " pranks " ; his fondness for cooking
and the excellence of his dishes ; his excursions " after
taps," for buckwheat cakes and oysters or ice-cream and
soda-water to " Joe's " and, for heavier fare, to " Benny
Haven's," a mile away, where to be found was a serious
offence ; they remember his indifference to discipline, and
the number of his demerits which they are at pains to excuse
as " not indicating any moral obliquity," but due to such
harmless faults as " lates," " absences," " clothing out of
order " ; best of all, they remember his drawings : his
caricatures of the cadets, the Board of Visitors, the masters,
his sketches of all kinds scribbled over the margins of his
text-books, his illustrations to Dickens, to Dumas, to Victor
Hugo. General Langdon recalls a picture that he and
Whistler painted in collaboration, Whistler putting in the
figures. Whistler gave his drawings away generously, and
many have been preserved. Even the cover of an old
geometry book, in which he sketched at odd moments and
once noted some boyish bets with General Webb, was always
kept by his room-mate, Frederick L. Childs (Les Enjants,
Whistler nicknamed him), and is now kept as carefully by
Mr. Thomas Childs, his son, who has kindly lent it to us. All
these things point to the affection in which Whistler was held.
Whistler looked back to West Point with equal affection.
He failed, but West Point coloured his after-years and was
the basis of his code of conduct. As a " West Point man "
he met every emergency, and his bearing, his carriage, showed
the influence of those days when, as he liked to look back to
himself, he was " very dandy in grey." For the discipline,
the tradition, the tone of the Academy, he never lost his
respect. He knew what it could do in making men of the
boys appointed to it. " From the moment we came," he
said, when telling us of West Point, " we were United States
Officers, not school-boys, not college students. We were

36 [1854

SAM WELLEK'S LODGING IN THE FLEET PRISON

(Waff r- Colour)

ON POST DUTY AT WEST POINT
AN ENCAMPMENT

WEST POINT

ruled, not by little school or college rules, but by our honour,
by our deference to the unwritten law of tradition." He
resented the least innovation that threatened the hold of
this tradition over the cadets. To take a cadet into court
was destruction to the whole morale of West Point, he declared,
the old way was better, when it was such a disgrace to offend
against the unwritten laws that the offender's career was
ruined. In the most trivial matters, he deplored any devia-
tion from the old standard. That was the reason of his
indignation when he heard that the cadets were playing
football, and, worse, were having matches with college
teams : to put themselves on the level of students was
beneath the dignity of officers of the United States. During
our war with Spain, during the Boers' struggle in South Africa,
there was not an event, not a rumour, that he did not refer
for judgment to West Point and its code. The Spanish War,
though " no doubt, we should never have gone into it, was
quite the most wonderful, the most beautiful war since
Louis XIV. ; never in modern times has there been such a
war, and all because it was conducted on correct West
Point principles, with the most perfect courtesy and dignity
on both sides, and the greatest chivalry." When he came
back to London from Corsica in 1901, and was telling us of
the people and the way they clung to old custom and cere-
monial, he said that really he had found " the Roman tradition
almost as fine as the West Point tradition," and this was
indeed a concession. We never knew him to show the
least desire to return to Lowell or Stonington, to Pomfret
or Washington, but he always said, "If I ever make
the journey to America, I will go straight to Baltimore,
then to West Point, and then sail for England again."
One evening we asked him to meet an officer who had
just come from West Point. His interest could hot have
been keener had he left the Academy the day before.

1854] 37

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

He wanted to know about everything — the buildings, the
life, the discipline. He resented each and every innovation,
above all football. West Point to him was in danger when
cadets could stoop to dispute " with college students for
a dirty ball kicked round a muddy field." This was the
shadow thrown over his pleasure when he heard of the pride
the Academy took in claiming him, and of his reputation
there : his drawings hanging in places of honour, a room
always ready for him. It was the military side of the
Academy, however, that stirred him to enthusiasm. His
face fell, when, asking the officer who, like Major Whistler,
was in the Artillery, " Professor of Tactics, I suppose ? "
and the officer answered, " No, of French." One other way
he showed his affection for the Military Academy was by send-
ing to the library a copy of Whistler v. Ruskin : Art and
Art Critics. In it, Mr. Holden, the librarian, informs us,
are autograph notes, and on the title-page the inscription :
" From an old cadet whose pride it is to remember his West
Point days." This is signed with the Butterfly, and at the
end of the book he pasted in newspaper cuttings about the
trial. The authorities at West Point, on their side, have
honoured him by allowing a memorial tablet, one of St.
Gaudens' last works, to be placed in the library of the
Academy.

But it needs more than respect and love for the Military
Academy to make a soldier, and Whistler was, as Poe had
been before him, an alien at West Point. It was no question
of the number of his demerits or of his ignorance of chemistry
and history : he had something else to do in life.

38 [1854-

CHAPTER V. THE COAST SURVEY. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FOUR TO
EIGHTEEN FIFTY-FIVE

WHEN Whistler left West Point in 1854, he had not
only to face the disappointment of his mother, but
to find another career. Miss Davis writes us that she re-
members seeing Whistler at Scarsdale, West Chester County,
New York, where Mrs. Whistler had a house for the summer,
" sitting very quietly in a dark corner of the piazza, and I
have thought since that he had probably just come from
West Point." It was bad enough to have disappointed his
mother ; to make it worse, the new plan now was to ap-
prentice him to Mr. Winans in the locomotive works at
Baltimore.

Mr. Frederick B. Miles writes us :

" It was in 1854 that I first met him in Baltimore, when he had
just left West Point, at the house of Thomas Winans, who had
returned from Russia and built a beautiful house on the very
grounds where I had been for several years at the French school
of M. Boursaud. I was then apprenticed to thelloco works of
old Mr. Ross Winans, Thomas Winans' father. Jem Whistler's
elder brother, George Whistler, was a friend of my family ; had
been superintendent of the New York and New Haven Railroad
(was an engineer) and had married Miss Julia Winans. sister of
Thomas Winans, then came into the loco works as partner
and superintendent. I was in the drawing-room under him.

" Whistler was staying with Tom Winans mainly, and some-
times with his brother, George Whistler. They were all perplexed
at his ' flightiness ' — wanted him to enter the loco works. His
younger brother William was an apprentice in the works along
1854] 39

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

with me, and also a cousin, John McNeill. But Jem never really
worked in the locomotive business. He spent much of his several
short stays and two long ones in Baltimore loitering in his
peculiar bizarre way about the drawing office and shops, and at
my drawing desk in Tom Winans' house. We all had boards
with paper, carefully stretched, which Jem would cover with
tentative sketches to our great disgust, obliging us to stretch fresh
ones, but we loved him all the same ! He would also ruin all
our best pencils ! sketching not only on the paper, but also on
the smoothly finished wooden backs of the drawing-boards which,
I think, he preferred to the paper side. We kept some of the
sketches for a long time. I had a beauty — a cavalier in a
dungeon cell, with one small window high up — Rembrandt effects
and a little bird on the window, ct la Silvio Pellico's Rondinello
Pettegrino ! — perhaps inspired by it ? I think he afterwards
painted a picture like it, but I could never find it. In all his
work at that time he was very Rembrandtesque, but of course
only amateurish. Nevertheless he was studying and working out
effects"

Whistler saw enough of the locomotive works to know
that he did not want to be an apprentice, and it was not long
before he left Baltimore for Washington and the Coast
Survey. When he told us of his experiences there, he spoke
as if he had gone to Washington straight from West Point.
He was with us on the evening of September 15, 1900, after
the news had come from the Transvaal of President Kruger's
flight, and our talking of it led him back to West Point, and
so to the story of his days in the service of the Government.
He had followed the Boer War with intense interest.

ci The Boers are as fine as Southerners — their fighting would be
no discredit to West Point [and' he was indignant with us for
looking upon Kruger's flight as, diplomatically, a blunder].
Diplomatically it was right, you know; the one thing Kruger
should have done, just as, in that other amazing campaign,
flight had been the one thing for Jefferson Davis, a southern
gentleman — who had the code. I will always remember the
courtesy shown me by Jefferson Davis, through whom I got my
appointment in the Coast Survey.
40 [1854

THE COAST SURVEY

"It was after my little difference with the Professor of Chemistry
at West Point. The professor would not agree with me that
silicon was a gas, but declared it was a metal, — and as we could
come to no agreement in the matter, it was suggested — all in
the most courteous and correct West Point way — that perhaps
I had better leave the Academy. Well, you know, it was not a
moment for the return of the prodigal to his family or for any
slaying of fatted calves. — I had to work, and I went to Washington.
—There, I called at once on Jefferson Davis, who was Secretary
of War — a West Point man like myself. He was most charming
and I — well, from my Russian cradle, I had an idea of things,
and the interview was in every way correct — conducted on both
sides with the utmost dignity and elegance. I explained my
unfortunate difference with the Professor of Chemistry — repre-
sented that the question was one of no vital importance — while
on all really important questions I had carried off more than the
necessary marks. My explanation made, I suggested that I
should be re-instated at West Point, in which case, as far as I
was concerned, silicon should remain a metal. The Secretary,
courteous to the end, promised to consider the matter, and
named a day for a second interview.

" Before I went back to the Secretary of War, I called on the
Secretary of the Navy, also a Southerner, James C. Dobbin, of
South Carolina, suggesting that I should have an appointment in
the Navy. The Secretary objected that I was too young. In
the confidence of youth, I said age should be no objection ; I
' could be entered at the Naval Academy, and the three years
at West Point would count at Annapolis.' The Secretary was
interested, for he too had a sense of things. He regretted, with
gravity, tthe impossibility. But something impressed him ; for
later, hejreserved one of six appointments he had to make in the
Marines and offered it to me. In the meantime, I had returned
to^the Secretary of War, who had decided that it was impossible
to meet my wishes in the matter of West Point ; West Point
discipline had to be observed, and if one cadet were re-instated,
a dozen others who had tumbled out after me, would have to be
re-instated too. But if I would call on Captain Benham, of the
Coast Survey, a post might be waiting for me there."

Captain Benham was an old friend of Major , Whistler's,
and Whistler was engaged in the drawing division of the

1854] 41

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, at the salary of a
dollar and a half a day. This appointment he received on
November 7, 1854, six months after he had left West Point.
Of this place, and his work in it, Whistler said but little.
His adventures with the Secretaries of War and of the Navy
amused him — they were ordered so entirely after the West
Point code. There was nothing' whatever to appeal to him
in the routine of an office. What he had to do, he did, but
with no enthusiasm.

" I was apt to be late, I was so busy socially. I lived in a small
room, but it was amazing how I was asked and went everywhere
— to balls, to the Legations, to all that was going on. Labouchere,
an attache at the British Legation, has never ceased to talk of
me, so gay, going everywhere, and, when I had not a dress suit
pinning up the tails of my black frock-coat, and turning it into
a dress-coat for the occasion. Shocking."

Mr. Labouchere has told this story in print, and also in a
letter to us :

" I did know Whistler very well in America about fifty years
ago. But he was then a young man at Washington, who — if I
remember rightly — had not been able to pass his examination
at West Point and had given no indication of his future fame.
He was rather hard up, I take it, for I remember that he pinned
back the skirt of a frock-coat to make it pass as a dress-coat at
evening parties. Washington was then a very small place
compared with what it is now, where everybody — so to say —
knew everybody, and the social parties were of a very simple
character. This is really^alljthat I remember of Whistler at that
time, except that he was thought witty and paradoxically
amusing ! '*

But long before this, there was something in his dress
which drew attention to him. Though he was never seen
in the " high-standing collar and silk hat " of the time, some
remember him in a Scotch cap and grey shawl, then the
fashion ; others recall a slouch hat and circular cloak, his
coat, unbuttoned, showing his waistcoat Awhile traditions
42 [1854

THE COAST SURVEY

of his social charm and gaiety come from every side. Ad-
jutant-General Breck is responsible for the story of Whistler
having once invited the Russian Minister — others say the
Charge d'Affaires — Edward de Stoeckl, to dine with him,
carrying the Minister off in his own carriage, doing the
marketing by the way, and cooking the dinner before his
guest in the room in the house where he lived. And it has
been said that never was the Minister entertained by so
brilliant a host while in Washington.

Mr. Kobbe obtained much information from the late A.
Lindenkohl, a fellow draughtsman in the Coast Survey.
Whistler lodged in a house at the north-east corner of E. and
Twelfth Streets : " a two-story brick building with attic. He
occupied a plainly but comfortably furnished room, such as
could then have been rented for about ten dollars a month."
The office records show that he worked six and one half days
in January, and five and three-fourth days in February.
And he usually arrived late ; but, he would say, really it was
not his fault ; he was not too late, it was the office that
opened too early. Lindenkohl described an effort to reform
him :

" Captain Benham, who was then in charge of the office, took
occasion to tell me that he felt great interest in the young man,
not only on account of his talents, but also on account of his
father, who was his particular friend, and he told me that he
would be highly pleased if I could induce Whistler to be more
regular in his attendance. ' Call at his lodgings on your way to
the office,' he said, ' and see if you can't bring him along.'

" Accordingly, one morning, I called at Whistler's lodgings at
half-past eight. No doubt he felt somewhat astonished, but
received me with the greatest bonhomie, invited me to make
myself at home and promised to make all possible haste to comply
with my wishes. Nevertheless he proceeded with the greatest
deliberation to rise from his couch and put himself into shape
for the street and prepare his breakfast, which consisted of
a cup of strong coffee brewed in a steam-tight French machine,
1854] 43

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

then a novelty ; and also insisted upon treating me with a cup of
coffee. We made no extra haste on our way to the office, which
we reached about half-past ten — an hour and a half after time.
I did not repeat the experiment. . . . Whistler was possessed
of an elegant figure with an abundance of black curly hair, soft
lustrous eyes, finely cut features, fair complexion, well-shaped
hands and a graceful tournure. I thought him about the hand-
somest fellow I ever met ; but for some reasons I did not consider
him a perfect model of manly beauty — his mouth betokened
more ease than firmness, his brow more reserve than acute
mental activity, and his eyes more depth than penetration.
Sensitiveness and animation appeared to be his predominating
traits."

Lindenkohl also said that Whistler already spoke of Paris
with enthusiasm, that he made landscapes, sketched some-
times from the office windows, and studies of people, always
taking the greatest interest in the arrangement and folds of
their clothes. Whistler showed him " several examples
done with the brush in sepia, in old French or Spanish styles,"
whatever this may mean. Another draughtsman in the
office recalled Whistler sketching even on the walls as he
went downstairs. And, though in Washington only a few
months, he left there, as everywhere, an impression of his
gaiety, his charm, his indifference to work except in the one
form in which work interested him.

If nothing else were known of this period, it would be
memorable for the technical instruction he received in the
Coast Survey. His work was the drawing and etching of
Government topographical plans and maps, which have
to be made with the utmost accuracy and sharpness of line.
His training, therefore, was in the hardest and most perfect
school of etching in the world, a fact never, until now,
clearly pointed out. The work was dull, altogether me-
chanical, and he sometimes relieved the dulness by filling
empty spaces on the plates with sketches of his own. Captain
Benham told him plainly, Whistler said, that he was not
44 [1854

THE COAST Sl'RVKY, Xo. 1
(Etching)

COAST SURVEY, No. 2, AXACAPA ISLAND
(Etching)

THE COAST SURVEY

there to spoil Government coppers, and ordered all the designs
to be immediately erased. Other accounts have been given
but this was Whistler's account to us.* Only two plates
have been as yet, or probably ever will be, found that can be
attributed to him, wholly or in part. These are Coast
Survey, No. 1, and Coast Survey, No. 2, Anacapa Island.
They are undescribed by Mr. Wedmore, though referred to
in his preface to the Catalogue of Whistler's Etchings. They
were first described in the Catalogue of the Whistler Memorial
Exhibition in London, 1905. The Coast Survey, No. 1,
brought him neither credit nor into the graces of the Coast
Survey officials. It is a plate giving two parallel views, one
above the other, of the coast line of a rocky shore, the lower
showing a small town in a deep bay, with, below them both
to the extreme left, the profile of the same coast. Whistler
was unable to confine himself to the Government require-
ments. In the lower design, chimneys are gaily smoking,
and on the upper part of the plate, several figures, obviously
reminiscent of prints and drawings he had seen, are sketched :
an old peasant woman, a man in a tall Italian hat, another
in a Sicilian bonnet, a mother and child in an oval, a battered
French soldier, a bearded monk in an elaborate cowl. The
drawing is schoolboy-like, though it shows certain observation,
but the biting is remarkable. The little figures are bitten
as well and in the same way as in La Vieille aux Loques,
etched three or four years afterwards : to look at them is to
know that Whistler was a consummate etcher technically
before he left the Coast Survey. There is no advance in the
biting of the French series. So astonishing is this mastery
that, if the technique in some of the French plates were not
so similar, one would be tempted to doubt whether Whistler
really etched those little figures in Washington, especially

* Since this was written, Mr. John R. Key has published an article, Recollections
of Whistler in the Century Magazine for April 1908, in which he says that this
plate was merely an experimental one, such as beginners were allowed to work upon.
1854] 45

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

as the plate is unsigned. The plate escaped by chance.
Whistler's friend and fellow draughtsman, Mr. John R. Key,
to whom it was given to clean off and use again, asked to
keep it, and it was sold to him for the price of old copper.
The second plate, Anacapa Island, is signed by several
engravers. Whistler, most likely, etched the view of the
eastern extremity of the island, for many lines on the rocky
shore resemble the work in the French series, and also the
two flights of birds which, though they enliven the design,
have no topographical value. This plate was finished and
published. There is said to be a third plate, a chart of the
Delaware River, but we have never seen it and can find out
nothing about it. Mr. E. G. Kennedy and Mr. Frederick
Keppel have shown us tiny drawings and prints of soldiers
and other figures which they believe were done at this
time.

One other record of Whistler at the Coast Survey remains,
but of a very different kind. He liked to tell the story.
Captain Benham used to come and look through the small
magnifying glass each draughtsman in this department had
to work with. One day, Whistler etched a little devil on
the glass, and Captain Benham looked through it at the plate.
Whistler described himself to us, at the moment, lying full
length on a sort of mattress or trestle, so as not to touch
the copper. But he saw Captain Benham give a jump.
The Captain said nothing. He pocketed the glass, and that
was all Whistler heard of it until many years afterwards
when, one day, an old gentleman appeared at his studio in
Paris, and by way of introduction took from his watch-chain
a tiny magnifying glass, and asked Whistler to look through
it — " and," he said, " well — we recognised each other
perfectly."

Captain Benham is dead, but his son, Major H. H. Benham,
writes us : "I have heard my father tell the story. He was
46 [1854

THE COAST SURVEY

very fond of Whistler and thought most highly of his great
ability — or rather genius, I should say."

Genius like Whistler's served him as little at the Coast
Survey as at West Point. He resigned in February 1855.
His brother, George Whistler, and Mr. Winans tried harder
than ever to make him enter the locomotive works in Balti-
more. He was now about twenty-one, old enough at last
to insist upon what he wanted, and what he wanted was to
study art. Already at St. Petersburg, his ability had struck
his mother's friends. At Pomfret and at West Point, he
owed to his drawing whatever distinction he had attained.
And there had been things done outside of school and
Academy and office work he told us :

" Portraits of my cousin Annie Denny and of Tom Winans,
and many paintings at Stonington that Stonington people
remembered so well they looked me up in Paris afterwards.
Indeed, all the while, ever since my Russian days, there had
been always the thought of art, and when at last I told the
family that I was going to Paris, they said nothing. There was
no difficulty. They just got me a ticket. I was to have three
hundred and fifty dollars (seventy pounds) a year, and my^step-
brother, George Whistler, who was one of my guardians, sent it
to me after that regularly every quarter."

1855] 47

CHAPTER VI. STUDENT DAYS IN THE
LATIN QUARTER. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE

WHISTLER arrived in Paris before the end of the
summer of 1855. There he fell among friends. The
American Legation was open to the son of Major Whistler.
It was the year of the first great French Exhibition, and
Sir Henry Cole, the British Commissioner, as well as the
Thackerays, were in Paris. Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who
remembers meeting him, writes :

" I wish I had a great deal more to tell you about Whistler.
I always enjoyed talking to him when we were both hobbledehoys
at Paris ; he used to ask me to dance, and rather to my dis-
appointment perhaps, for, much as I liked talking to him, I
preferred dancing, we used to stand out while the rest of the
party polkaed and waltzed by. There was a certain definite
authority in the things he said, even as a boy. I can't remember
what they were, but I somehow realised that what he said
mattered. When I heard afterwards of his fanciful freaks and
quirks, I could not fit them in with my impression of the wise
young oracle of my own age."

According to Mr. F. B. Miles, Whistler's brother George
wanted him to study at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts, but there
is no record of his ever having been admitted. He went
instead to the studio which Gleyre inherited from Delaroche
and afterwards handed down to Gerdme, and which drew to
it the students who did not crowd to Couture and Aiy Scheffer.
It was not extraordinary, as some have said, that Whistler
should have gone there ; it would have been extraordinary
48 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

had he stayed away. He arrived in Paris just when Courbet,
refused at the Exhibition, was defying convention with his
first show and his first " Manifesto," and many of the younger
men were throwing over Romanticism to follow him as
Realists. Whistler quickly found himself more in sympathy
with the followers of Courbet than with Gleyre's pupils, and
he became so intimate with the group, among whom were
Fantin and Degas, who studied under Lecocq de Boisbaudran
that it is sometimes thought he must have been their fellow
student. But on his arrival in Paris, the young American
probably had heard neither of Lecocq de Boisbaudran nor
Courbet, and Gleyre was the popular teacher. Fantin-
Latour, in some notes made shortly before his death, which
have been handed to us, and M. Duret both say that they
seldom, if ever, heard Whistler speak of Gleyre's. When
we asked him about it, he seemed to have nothing to recall
save the dignified principles upon which the atelier was
conducted. There was not even the usual tormenting of
the nouveau. " If a man were a decent fellow, and would
sing his song, and take a little chaff, he had no trouble," and
this agrees with Du Maurier's description in Trilby of Carrel's,
which was Gleyre's. Whistler could remember only one
disagreeable incident, and that was not in connection with
a nouveau, but with a student who had been there some time,
and was putting on airs. One morning he came to the studio
late,

" and there were all the students working away very hard, the
unpopular man among them, and there, at the end of the room,
on the model's stand, was an enormous catafalque, the unpopular
one's name on it in big, staring letters. And no one said a word.
But that killed him. He was never again seen in the place."

Gleyre was by no means colourless as a teacher. He is
now remembered chiefly as a legitimate successor to David
and the Classicists, but he held theories disquieting to the

1855-59] I:D 49

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

academic mind. He taught that, before a picture was begun,
the colours should be arranged on the palette : in this way,
he said, difficulties were overcome, for once the work was
started, attention could then be given unreservedly to the
drawing and modelling of the subject on the canvas in colour.
It was the system Whistler endeavoured to follow all his life.*
He taught also that ivory black is the basis of all tones, which
was a heresy to those who listened. Upon this preparation
of the palette and this basis of black — black " the universal
harmoniser " — thought a heresy in his case too, Whistler
founded his life-long practice as painter and his teaching
when he, in his turn, became a master, and visited the pupils
of the Academic Carmen. In fact, as he has told us over
and over, his practice of a lifetime was founded on what he
learned as a bey, on the methods he never abandoned. He
only developed methods, misunderstood by all those prophets,
who have said he had but enough knowledge for his own
needs.

Whistler spoke often to us of the men he met at Gleyre's :
Poynter, Du Maurier, Lamont, Joseph Rowley. Leighton,
in 1855, was studying at Couture's, developing his theory
that " the best dodge is to be a devil of a clever fellow."
Mrs. Harrington says Leighton made Whistler's acquaintance
at the time and admired Whistler's etchings. But Whistler
never recalled Leighton among his fellow students, though
he spoke often, and with affection, of Thomas Armstrong,
who wojked at Ary Scheffer's, and Aleco lonides, not an

* " II recommendait de faire des tons d'avance sur la palette," Clement writes
in his life of Gleyre, 1878 ; " on melait les couleurs, on faisait des paquets de
couleur de chair, et on s'en servait comme on se serait servi d'un ton d'ambre
monochrome. Ceci avait pour but de separer les difficultes. La question de la
couleur devait etre plus ou moms resolue par ces preparations prealable, et 1'atten-
tion pouvait se porter plus directement sur le module et sur le dessin. . . . Parfois
il disait des choses qui ressemblait a des heresies ; on se les repetait, car on savait
bien quo c'etaient des hyperboles. Ainsi, un jour, il dit : ' Le noir d'ivoire est
la base des tons.' "
50 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

art student but studying, no one seemed to know what or
where. This is the group of Trilby, Du Maurier's sentimental
echo of La Vie de Boheme. Lament, " the Laird " of Trilby,
and Aleco lonides, " the Greek," are dead. It is regrettable
that Du Maurier published his spite against Whistler and
so wrecked what Whistler had imagined a genuine friendship.
Sir Edward J. Poynter, Mr. Armstrong and Mr. Rowley
remain. The two latter have given us their impressions of
Whistler at the time, and so has Mr. Luke lonides, then
studying for the Diplomatic Service :

" I first knew Jimmie Whistler in Paris. It was in the montli
of August 1855. My younger brother was staying there with a
tutor, and had made friends with Jimmie. He was just twenty-
one years old, full of life and ' go,' always ready for fun, good-
natured and good-tempered — he wore a peculiar straw hat
slightly on the side of his head — it had a low crown and a broad
brim."

Whistler etched a portrait of himself in this hat, which
startled even artists and students and became a legend in
the Quartier.

Mr. Rowley (" Taffy ") writes us :

" It was in 1857-8 that I knew Whistler, and a most amusing
and eccentric fellow he was, with his long, black, thick, curly
hair, and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon round it. I
remember on the wall of the atelier was a representation of him,
I believe done by Du Maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter
one, and then merely a note of interrogation — very clever it was
and very like the original. In those days he did not work hard,
and I have a faint recollection of seeing a head painted by him
in deep Rembrandtish tones which was thought very good
indeed. He was always smoking cigarettes, which he made
himself, and his droll sayings caused us no end of fun. I don't
think he stayed long in any rooms. One day he told us he had
taken a new one, and he was fitting it up pen d, peu, and he had
already got a tabouret and a chair. He told me tales of being
invited to a reception at the American Minister's, but, as he had
'no dress-suit to go in, he had to borrow Poynter's^ who fitted
1855-59] 51

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

him out, all except his boots. So he waited until the guests
at the hotel had retired for the night, when he went round the
corridors, found what he wanted, and left them at the door on
his return from the reception. It was more his manner and
the clever way he told the tale that amused us all. You see it is
nearly fifty years since all this happened, and I find it rather
difficult to recall scenes which occurred so long ago. I have his
first tAvelve etchings, which he did in 1858. I never saw him after
I left Paris in 1858 ! He was never a friend of mine, and it was
only occasionally he came to see us at the atelier in Notre-Dame-
des-Champs."

Whistler lived at one time with Sir Edward J. Poynter,
who, however, scarcely seems to have understood him.
Their methods of study and work were different, and, to
Poynter, Whistler was something of the " Idle Apprentice."
In his speech at the first Royal Academy Banquet (April 30,
1904) after Whistler's death, Poynter said :

" Thrown very intimately in Whistler's company in early
days, I knew him well when he was a student in Paris — that is,
if he could be called a student, who, to my knowledge, during
the two or three years when I was associated with him, devoted
hardly as many weeks to study. His genius, however, found its
way in spite of an excess of the natural indolence of disposition
and love of pleasure of which a certain share has been the
hereditary attribute of the art student."

" Whistler was never wholly one of us," Mr. Armstrong
told us once in talking of him. It seems that Whistler
laughed at the Englishmen and their ways, above all at the
boxing and sparring matches in their studios ; he could not
see why they didn't hire the concierges to do the fighting
for them. The rush of American artists to Paris had not
yet begun, and Whistler was more closely associated with
the French than with any other students. He could speak
their language, he knew Murger by heart before he came to
Paris, and there he got to know him personally. Mr. lonides
says that once, walking along a street on the rive gauche with
52 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

Whistler and Lament, they met Murger, and Whistler intro-
duced them. Paris, in the Latin Quarter, was still the Paris
of Murger, where the young artist still led the easiest, merriest,
dirtiest existence possible, where, with his long hair and
beard and wonderful clothes, he still continued to epater le
bourgeois ; where he toiled away all day in the schools or
galleries, and played away all night in the cafes and balls ;
where he was the friend of the grisette ; where he met poverty
with the gaiety of Marcel and failure with the swagger of
Rodolphe, where the extravagant was for him the normal ;
where courage and hope saved him from disaster ; and
where, through all his absurdities and follies and blague, art
was the beginning and end of his every thought and ambition.
Whistler delighted in the fantastic humour and picturesque -
ness of it all, and was always quoting Murger, even late in life.
The Englishmen at Gleyre's could not understand his pleasure
in his " no shirt friends," as he called one group of students.
Every now and then their society palled, even on him, and
he would then tell the Englishmen that he " must give up
the ' no shirt ' set and begin to live cleanly." The end
came when, during an absence from Paris, he lent them his
room, luxurious from the student standpoint, with a bath,
and full of beautiful china. The " no shirt friends " could
not change their habits with their surroundings. They
made grogs in the bath ; they never washed a plate, but,
when one side was dirty, ate off the other, and Whistler
had not bargained to make his own rooms the background
for such a scene in the Vie de Boheme. But this was later
on, after his adventures with them had been the gcssip of
the Quartier, and had confirmed the Englishmen in their
impressions of his idleness.

Among the many French students who were his companions,
he had a few intimate friends : Aubert, the first man he
knew in Paris, a clerk in the Credit Foncier ; Fantin ; Legros ;
1855-59] 53

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Becquet, a musician ; Henri Martin, son of the historian ;
Drouet * the sculptor ; Henri Oulevey and Ernest Delannoy,
painters. Only two of these friends survive to-day. From
Fantin we have the notes made just before his death. Legros
prefers to remember nothing, the friendship in his case
ending irrevocably many years since. MM. Drouet and
Oulevey have told us almost as much as Whistler did of
those days. When Oulevey first knew him, Whistler lived
in a little hotel in the Rue St. Sulpice ; then he moved to
No. 1 Rue Bourbon-le-Chateau, near St. Germain des Pres ;
and then to No. 3 Rue Campagne-Premiere, where Drouet
had a studio. For a while, when remittances ran out, he
climbed his six flights and shared a garret with Delannoy,
the " Ernest " of the stories Whistler liked best to tell.

Whistler's lodgings and restaurants, a matter of course
to his fellow students, startled the friends from home. Mr.
Miles writes us an account of his experience in May 1857,
when he came to Paris with letters from Whistler's family
and a draft for his allowance.

" At the Beaux- Arts he was not to be found ; he had given
it up, but I got his address. He had left it without leaving
any record of his new one. I was in despair, but went to the
Luxembourg, hoping to find him or some trace of him. In looking
at a picture, I backed into an easel, heard a muttered ' damn '
behind me — and there was Whistler himself, painting busily.
He took me to his quarters in a little back street, up ten flights
of stairs — a tiny room with brick floor, a cot bed, a chair on which
were a basin and pitcher — and that was all ! We sat on the cot,
and talked as cheerfully as if in a palace — and he got the draft.
' Now,' said he, ' I shall move downstairs, and begin all over —
furnish my room comfortably. You see, I have just eaten my
washstand and borrowed a little, hoping the draft would arrive.
Have been living for some time on my wardrobe. You are just
in time, don't know what I should have done, but it often happens

* M. Drouet died in May 1908, just as we were going over our proofs. Only
the spring before, we had seen him in Paris when he had told us a great deal of
Whistler and student life in the Fifties. Now, only Legros and Oulevey remain.
54 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

this way ! I first eat a wardrobe, and then move upstairs a flight
~'?. or two, but seldom get so high as this before the draft comes ! '
How true this is I can't say, but it sounds probable and very like
Whistler — at that age — he was then about twenty-three or just
twenty-four at most — May 1857. Then Whistler showed me
Paris ; met some of his painter friends. I remember only
Lambert (French) and Poynter (English) — now a great swell.
Whistler didn't care much for Poynter at that time, but was
witty and amusing, as usual. He dined with me at the best
restaurant in Paris, which he had not done for a long time, and
dined me, the next day, at a little cremerie * to show what his
usual fare had been, and, indeed, usually was when the time
was approaching for the arrival of his allowance — the back ones
being exhausted ! "

The restaurant where they all usually met was Lalouette's,
near the Rue Dauphine, famous to them for a wonderful
Burgundy at one franc the bottle, le cachet vert, called for
only on great occasions, and more famous now for Bibi
Lalouette of the etching, the child of the patron. Lalouette,
like Siron at Barbizon, understood the artist and gave un-
limited credit. Whistler, when he left Paris, owed Lalouette
three thousand francs, every sou of which was paid, though
it took a long time. They also dined at Madame Bachimont's
in the Place de la Sorbonne, a cremerie, where Whistler

* This cremerie may have been Madame Bachimont's or else " the clean little
place " described by Major W. L. B. Jenney. The patronne made wonderful
pumpkin pies, and Whistler, who never lost his appetite for American dishes,
came to eat them. " Young Whistler, then an art student, bright, original and
amusing," Major Jenney thinks, gave " no promise of any particular ability as
an artist," but had made a reputation as the leader of disorder at the Louvre, and
the organiser of nigger minstrels. " Among the habitues at Madame Busque's
was a student from the School of Mines, Vinton, afterwards Professor of Mining
at Columbia College, and during the war a brigadier-general. He told me the
following story in 1866. One night in South Carolina an officer wandered into
his camp. He sent word to the general, by the sergeant of the guard, that he
was an officer who had lost his way, that he asked permission to pass the rest of
the night in his camp, adding that he had known General Vinton when a student
in Paris. General Vinton sent for the officer, whom he failed to recognise. After
some thought, he asked the question, * Who was the funniest man we knew in
Paris ? ' ' Whistler ! ' instantly answered the officer. ' All righy says Vinton,
' take that empty cot, you are no spy.' "
1855-59] 55

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

once gave a dinner to the American Consul, and invited
" Canichon" the daughter of the house, and bought her a
new hat for the occasion — a tremendous sensation through
all the Quartier.

M. Drouet does not think that Whistler worked much,
certainly not in usual student fashion at the schools. " He
was every evening at the students' balls, and as he never
got up until eleven or twelve in the morning, where was the
time for work ? " M. Oulevey cannot remember his doing
much at Gleyre's or the Luxembourg, or the Louvre, but
he was always drawing, in the manner of Gavarni, the people
and the scenes of the Quartier his subjects, often des sujets
presque enfantins. In the memory of both, his work is
overshadowed by his gaiety and by his wit, his blague, his
charm : " tout a fait un homme a part," is M. Oulevey 's phrase,
with " un cceur de jemme et une volonte d1 homme. " Anything
might be expected of him, and M. Drouet adds that he was
quick to resent an insult, always un petit rageur. George
Boughton, of a younger generation, when he came to the
Quartier, found that all stories of larks were put down to
Whistler. Mr. Luke lonides writes :

" He was a great favourite among us all, and also among the
grisettes we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on.
I remember one especially — they called her the tigresse. She
seemed madly in love with Jimmie and would not allow any
other woman to talk to him when she was present. She sat to
him several times with her curly hair down her back. She
had a good voice, and I often thought she had suggested Trilby
to Du Maurier."

She was the model for Fumette, Eloise, a little modiste,
who knew Musset by heart and would recite his verses to
Whistler, and who one day in a rage tore up, not his etchings
as Mr. Wedmore says, but the Gavarni-like drawings.
Whistler was living then in the Rue St. Sulpice, and when
he came home, to find the pieces piled high on his table,
56 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

he wept over the ruin, literally wept, according to
Oulevey.

A figure as familiar in the memory of his friends is La
Mere Gerard. He loved to talk about her himself. She
was very old and almost blind, was said to write verse, had
come down in the world, and sold violets and matches at
the gate of the Luxembourg Gardens. She was very pic-
turesque, as she sat huddled up on the steps, and he got her
to pose for him many times. She insisted that she had a
tapeworm, and if in the studio he asked her what she would
eat or drink, her invariable answer was " Du lait : il aime
<;a ! " a story that recalls one told by Flaubert. They used
to chaff him about her in the Quartier. Once, Lalouette
invited all his clients to spend a day with him in the country,
and Whistler accepted on condition that he could bring La
Mere Gerard. She arrived, got up in great style, sat at his
side in the carriage when they all drove off together, and grew
livelier as the day went on. He painted her in the course
of the afternoon, the portrait was a success, and he promised
it to her, but first took it back to the studio to finish. Then
he fell ill and was sent to England. When he returned and
saw the portrait again, he thought it much too good for La
Mere Gerard. He made a copy for the old lady, who saw the
difference and was furious. Not long after he was walking
past the Luxembourg, arm in arm with Lamont. The old
woman, huddled on the steps as usual, did not look up:

" Eh bien, Madame Gerard, comment $a va ? " Lamont
asked.

" Assez bien, Monsieur, assez bien"

" Et votre Americain ?" To which she replied, not looking
up, " Lui ? On dit qu'il a craque ! Encore une espece de
canaille de mains ! "

And Whistler laughed, and then she knew him, as so many
were to know him by that laugh all his life.
1855-59] 57

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

For ages after, in the Quartier, he was called " Espece de
canaille." And this is where Du Maurier got the story
which he tells in Trilby.

Another character in the Quartier, of whom Whistler never
tired of telling us, was the Count de Montezuma, the delightful,
inimitable, impossible Montezuma, not a student, not a
painter, not anything so far as we could discover, but an
adventurer after Whistler's own heart. He never had a sou,
but he always had cheek enough to see him through. Whistler
told us of him :

"This is the sort of thing he would do, and with an air —
amazing ! He started one day for Charenton on the steamboat,
his pockets, as usual, empty, and he was there for as long as he
could stay. The boat broke down, a sergent de ville came on
board and ordered everybody off except the captain and his
family, who happened to be with him. The Montezuma paid
no attention. With arms crossed, he walked up and down,
looking at no one. They waited, but he walked on, up and
down, up and down, looking at no one. The sergent de ville
repeated : ' Tout le monde ct terre ! ' The Montezuma gave no
sign. ' Et vous ? ' the sergent de ville asked at last. ' Je suis
de la famille ! ' said the Montezuma. Opposite, staring at
him, stood the captain with his wife and children. ' You see,'
said the sergent de ville, ' the captain does not know you, he says
you are not of the family. You must go.' ' Moi,' and the
Montezuma drew himself up proudly — ' M oi ! je suis le bdtard / '

Though frequently hard up, Whistler had an income
which seemed princely to students who lived on nothing
at all. If Whistler had money in his pockets, Mr. lonides
says, he spent it royally on others. If his pockets were
empty, he managed to refill them in a way that still amazes
M. Oulevey who, in proof of it, told us of the night when,
after the cafe where they had squandered their last sous on
kirsch had closed, he and Lambert and Whistler adjourned
to the Halles for supper, ordered the best and ate it. Then
he and Lambert stayed in the restaurant as hostages, while

58 [1855-59

LA MERE GERARD

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

Whistler, at dawn, went off to find the money to pay. He
was back when they awoke, with three or four hundred
francs in his pocket. He had been to see an American
friend, he said, a painter : " And do you know, he had the
bad manners to abuse the situation — he insisted on my
looking at his pictures ! "

There were times, however, when everybody failed, even
Mr. Lucas, George Whistler's friend, who was living in Paris
and often came to his rescue. One summer day he pawned
his coat when he was penniless and wanted an iced drink in
a buvette just across the way from his rooms in Rue Bourbon-
le-Chateau. " What would you ? " he said. " It is warm ! "
And for the next two or three days he went in shirt sleeves.
From Mr. lonides we have heard how Whistler and Ernest
Delannoy carried their straw mattresses to the nearest Mont
de PttU — stumbling up three flights of stairs under them
to be refused any advance at all by the man at the window.
" C'est bien," said Ernest, with his grandest air — " Cest
Men. J'enverrai un commissionnaire ! " And they dropped
the mattresses and walked out with dignity, to go supperless
home. Then there was a bootmaker to whom Whistler
owed money, and who appeared with his bill, refusing to
move unless he was paid. Whistler was courtesy itself, and
regretting his momentary embarrassment, begged the boot-
maker to accept an engraving of Garibaldi which he ventured
to admire. The bootmaker was so charmed that he spoke
no more of his bill, but took another order on the spot, and
made new shoes into the bargain.

Many of the things now told of Whistler, he used to tell us
of Ernest or some of the others : with such joy that not to
repeat his stories would be to give but a poor picture of him
as student. Ernest, he always said it was — though others
say it was Whistler — who, having a commission to copy a
picture in the Louvre, and not having any canvas or paints

1855-59] 59

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

or brushes, or a sou to buy them with, went boldly to the
gallery one morning. The first to arrive, he carried himself
with a businesslike air that would have disarmed any gardien
and picked out what he needed : an easel, a nice clean canvas,
a palette, a brush or two, and a stick of charcoal, wrote his
name in large letters on the back of the canvas, sketched
in his copy with the charcoal, and when artists and students
began to drop in, was too busy to see anything but his work.
Presently there was an outcry. What ? — an easel missing,
a canvas gone, brushes not to be found. The gardien bustled
round. Everybody talked at once. Ernest looked up in a
fury — shameful ! why should he be disturbed in this fashion ?
What was it all about anyhow ? When he heard what had
happened no one was louder in denunciation. It had come
to a pretty pass in the Louvre when you couldn't leave your
belongings over night without having them stolen ! Things
at last quieted down, Ernest's picture was sketched in, but
his palette was bare. He stretched, jumped down from his
high stool, strolled about, stopped to criticise here, to
praise there, until he saw the colours he needed. The copy
of the man who owned them ravished him. Astonishing !
He stepped back to see it better. He advanced to look at
the original, he grew excited, he gesticulated. The man,
who had never been noticed before, grew excited too. Ernest
talked the faster, gesticulated the more wildly, until down
came his thumb on just the white or the blue or the red he
wanted, and with another sweep of his arm, a big lump of it
was on his palette. Further on another supply offered itself.
In the end, his palette well set, he was back at his easel,
painting his copy. In some way he had supplied himself
most plentifully with " turps " so that several times the
picture was in danger of running off the canvas. At last
it was finished and displayed to his patron, who utterly
refused to have it. Whistler, however, succeeded in selling
60 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

it for Ernest to a dealer ; and, " Do you know," he said,
'* I saw the picture years afterwards, and I think it was
rather better than the original ! "

Oulevey's version is that it was Whistler who helped himself
to a box of colours, and, when discovered by its owner, was
all innocence and surprise and apology : why, he supposed
of course, the boxes of colour were there for the benefit of
students.

On another occasion when Ernest, according to Whistler,
had finished a large copy of Veronese's Marriage Feast at
Cana, he and a friend, carrying it jaimtily between them,
started out to find a buyer. They crossed the Seine and
offered it for five hundred francs to the big dealers on the
right bank. Then they offered it for two hundred and fifty
on the left. Then they went back and offered it for one
hundred and twenty-five. Then they came across to the
left and offered it for seventy-five. And back again for
twenty-five and across once more for ten. And they were
crossing still again, to try to get rid of it for five when, on
the Pont des Arts, they lifted the huge canvas : " E7ra," they
said with a great swing, " deux, trois — v'lan ! " and over it
went into the water with a splash. There was a cry from
the crowd, a rush to their side of the bridge, sergents de ville
came running, omnibuses and cabs stopped 011 both banks,
boats pushed out on the river — altogether it was an immense
success, and they went home enchanted.

Ernest was Whistler's companion in the most wonderful
adventure of all, the journey to Alsace, when several of the
French Set of etchings were made. Mr. Luke lonides thinks
it was in 1856. Fantin, who did not meet Whistler until
1858, remembered him, just back from a journey to the Rhine,
coming to the Cafe Moliere, and showing the etchings he
had made on the way. The French Set was published in
November of that year, and as Whistler returned late in the
1 855-59] 6 1

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

autumn, the series could scarcely have appeared so soon.
However, more important than the date is the fact that on
his journey the Liver dun, the Street at Saverne and The Kitchen
were etched. He had made a little money somehow, two
hundred and fifty francs, or it was a present from an uncle,
Sir Rennell Rodd suggests, and he and Ernest started out
for Nancy and Strasburg. At Cologne they woke up one
morning to find the money all gone. " What is to be done ? "
asked Ernest. " Order breakfast," said Whistler, which
they did. There was no American Consul in the town, and
after breakfast he wrote to everybody who could help him :
to a fellow student, a Chilian he had asked to forward letters
from Paris, to Seymour Haden in London, to Amsterdam
where he thought letters might have been sent by mistake.
Then they settled down to wait. Every day they would go
to the post office for letters, every day the officials would
say " Nichts ! Nichts ! " until they got to be known in the
town — Whistler, with his long hair, Ernest with his brown
holland suit and straw hat now fearfully out of season. The
boys of the town would be in wait and follow them to the
post office where, hardly were they at the door, before the
official was shaking his head and saying " Nichts ! Nichts ! "
and all the crowd would yell " Nichts ! Nichts I " At last,
to escape the constant attention, they would spend the day
sitting on the ramparts. It began to look desperate. Whistler
was reduced to washing his own shirt, and, with a little iron
he had bought on the way, to iron it at night in his room.
At the end of ten days, Whistler took his knapsack, put
his plates in it and carried it to the landlord, Herr Schmitz,
whose daughter, " Little Gretchen," he had etched — probably
the plate called Gretchen at Heidelberg. He said frankly
that he was penniless, but here were his copper plates in a
knapsack upon which he would set his seal. What was to
be done with copper plates ? the landlord asked. They

62 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

were to be kept with every care as the work of a distinguished
artist, Whistler answered, and when he was back in Paris,
he would send the money to pay his bill and then the landlord
would send him the knapsack. Herr Schmitz hesitated,
while Whistler and Ernest were in despair over the necessity
of trusting such masterpieces to him. The bargain was
struck after much talk. The landlord gave them a last break-
fast. Lina, the maid, slipped her last groschen into Whistler's
hand, and the two set out to walk from Cologne, with paper
and pencils for their baggage.

Whistler used to say that, had they been less young, they
could have seen only the discomfort of that long tramp. A
portrait was the price of every plate of soup, every egg,
every glass of milk they could get on the road. The children
who hooted them had sometimes to be drawn before a glass
of water, or a bit of bread, was given to them. They slept
in straw. And they walked until Whistler's light little
Parisian shoes got rid of a portion of their soles and most of
their upper leather, and Ernest's hollands grew shabbier and
shabbier. But they were young enough to laugh and, one
day, Whistler, seeing Ernest tramping ahead solemnly through
the mud, the rain dripping from his straw hat, his linen
coat a rag, shrieked with laughter as he limped. " What
would you ? " Ernest said mournfully, " les saisons m'ont
toujours devanct ! " Fortunately, it was the time of the
autumn fairs, and, joining a lady who played the violin and
a gentleman who played the harp, they gave entertainments
in every village they passed, beating a big drum to attract
the crowd, announcing themselves as distinguished artists
from Paris, offering to draw portraits, three francs the half-
length, five francs the full-length. At times they beat the
big drum in vain and Whistler was reduced to charging five
sous apiece for his portraits, but he did his best, he said, and
there was not a drawing to be ashamed of. ,
1855-59] 63

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

At last, they came to a town where there was an American
Consul, who knew Major Whistler, and advanced fifty francs
to his son. At Liege, poor, shivering, ragged Ernest got
twenty from the French Consul, and the rest of the journey
was made in comfort. On his return, Whistler's first appear-
ance at the Cafe Moliere was a triumph. They had thought
him dead, and here he was, le petit Americain I And what
blague, what calling for coffee pour le petit Whistler, pour
noire petit Americain I And what songs !

" Car il n'est pas mort, larifla ! fta ! fla !

Non, c'est qu'il dort.
Pour le reveiller, trinquons nos verres !
Pour le reveiller, trinquons encore ! "

That Herr Schmitz was paid and delivered up the plates,
the prints are the proofs. Some years after, Whistler went
back t6 Cologne, where he was travelling with his mother.
In the evening, he slipped away to the old, little hotel,
where the landlord and the landlord's daughter, grown up,
recognised him and rejoiced.

These stories, and hundreds like them, still float about the
Quartier, told, as we have heard them, not only by Whistler,
but by les vieux, who shake their heads over the present
degeneracy of students and the tameness of student life —
stories of the clay model of the heroic statue of Gericault,
left, for want of money, swathed in rags, and sprinkled every
morning until at last even the rags had to be sold, and then,
when they were taken off, Gericault had sprouted with
mushrooms that paid for a feast in the Quartier and enough
clay to finish the statue ; stories of a painter, in his empty
studio, hiring a piano by the month, that the landlord might
see it carried upstairs and get a new idea of his tenant's
assets ; stories of the monkey tied to a string, let loose in
other people's larders, then pulled back, clasping loaves of
bread and bottles of wine to its bosom ; stories of students,
64 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

with bedclothes all pawned, sleeping in chests of drawers
to keep warm ; stories of Courbet's Baigneuse in wonderful
Highland costume at the student's balls ; stories of practical
jokes at the Louvre. It was the day of practical jokes, les
charges ; and Courbet, whom they worshipped, was the
biggest blagueur of them all, eventually signing his death
warrant with that last terrible charge, the fall of the Column
of Vend6me,* which Paris never forgave.

In this atmosphere, Whistler's excitable spirit, so alarm-
ing to his mother, found a new stimulus, and it is not to be
wondered at, if his gaiety struck every one in Paris as in
St. Petersburg and Pomfret, West Point and Washington.

* During the Commune, when Courbet was Directeur des Beaux-Arts, the order
was given for the destruction of the Column. It was well known that, in his
repubk'can fury, he had urged its removal, representing that Paris should be purged
of all traces of the Empire. He was afterwards held responsible for the vandalism,
and some went so far as to say that he had taken actual part in pulling down the
Column. At all events he was condemned to six months' imprisonment, and to
paying the cost of putting it up again, and there is no doubt that all this trouble
hastened his death in 1877.

1855-59] i : E 65

CHAPTER VII. WORKING DAYS IN THE
LATIN QUARTER. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-FIVE TO EIGHTEEN FIFTY-NINE
CONTINUED

THE stories cannot be left out of Whistler's life as a
student, so living a part of it were they in his memory.
His fellow students brought back to England the impression
that he was an idler ; and it is hard to-day to make people
believe that he was anything else in his youth. And yet he
worked in Paris as prodigiously as he played. The con-
victions, the preferences, the prejudices he kept to the end
were formed during those early years. His lifelong admira-
tion for Poe, who as a West Point man would in any case
have commanded his regard, was no doubt strengthened by
the hold Poe had taken on the imagination of French men
of letters. His disdain of Nature, his contempt for anecdote
in art as a concession to an ignorant public, his translation
of painting into musical terms — this, and much else so often
charged against him as deliberate eccentricity or pose, can
be traced by the curious to Baudelaire. To us, it was
incomprehensible how he found time to read as a student,
and yet he knew the literature of that period thoroughly.
With its artists, and their tendencies and revolts, he was
more familiar. He identified himself with their leading
movements ; he mastered all that Gleyre could teach on
the one hand and Courbet on the other ; through his friends
he came under the influence of Lecocq de Boisbaudran, who,
more than any other teacher then, was occupied with the
66 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

study of values and the effects of night. In a word, it seems
impossible for any one to imagine that Whistler idled away
his four full years in Paris.

The younger men of the moment, in their rebellion against
the academic, the official, in art, were not so foolish as to
disdain Old Masters. They went to the Louvre to learn
how to use their eyes and their hands, and to be independent
enough to depend upon themselves. They copied the old
pictures there, and there they met and got to know each
other. To Whistler the Frenchmen were more sympathetic
than the English in his serious, as in his lighter hours, and
he joined them at the Louvre. Respect for the great tradi-
tions of art always remained his standard : " What is not
worthy of the Louvre is not art," he said again and again.
Rembrandt and Velasquez were the masters by whom he
was most influenced. There are only a few pictures by
Velasquez in the Louvre, and Whistler's early appreciation
of him has been a puzzle to some critics, who, to account
for it, have credited him with a journey, when a student,
to Madrid. But that journey was not made in the 'fifties,
nor at any other period, though he planned it more than once.
A great deal could be learned about Velasquez without going
to Spain. Whistler knew the London galleries, and in 1857
he visited the Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, taking
a friend with him. Miss Emily Chapman has looked up her
diaries for us, and writes that on September 11, 1857,
Rose, her sister, " went to Darwen and found Whistler
and Henri Martin staying at Earnsdale " with another
sister, Mrs. Potter — " a merry evening," the note finishes.
There were fourteen fine examples of Velasquez in the
Exhibition, lent from private collections in England, among
them the Venus, Admiral Pulido Pareja, Duke Olivarez
on Horseback, Don Balthazar in the Tennis Court, several
of which are now in the National Gallery, London '.
1855-59] 67

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER
Whistler once described himself to us as

"a surprising youth, suddenly appearing in the midst of the
French students from no one knew where, with my Mere Gforard
and the Piano Picture [At the Piano] for introduction, and making
friends with Fantin and Legros, who had already arrived, and
Courbet, whom they were all raving about, and who was very
kind to me."

The Piano Picture was painted toward the end of his
student years, the Mere Gerard a little earlier, so that this
description agrees with Fantin's notes. In 1858, Fantin
says, he was copying the Marriage Feast at Cana in the
Louvre when he saw passing one day a strange creature —
" Personnage etrange, le Whistler en chapeau bizarre," who,
amiable and charming, stopped to talk, and this was the
beginning of their friendship, strengthened that evening
when they met again at the Cafe Moliere. Carolus Duran
writes us, from the Academic de France in Rome, that
he and Whistler met when they were students in Paris ;
after that he lost sight of Whistler until the days of the new
Salon, but, though there were a few meetings then, his
memories are altogether of the student years. Bracquemond
has recalled for us that he was making the preliminary
drawing for his etching after Holbein's Erasmus in the Louvre,
when he first saw Whistler. Their meetings were cordial,
but never led to intimacy. With Legros, Whistler's friendship
did become intimate, and the two, with Fantin, formed
what Whistler called their little Society of Three.

Fantin was somewhat older, had been studying much
longer, and already had, among students, a reputation for
wide and sound knowledge : " as a learned painter," in Mr.
Armstrong's words. M. Benedite thinks that the friendship
between the two men had its interest for Fantin, to whom
Whistler was useful at the start, but that it was of the
greatest importance to Whistler, on whose art, in its develop-
68 [1855-50,

T£TE DE PAYSANNK

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

ment, it had a marked influence. Mr. Luke lonides, on the
other hand, insists that " even in those early days, Whistler's
influence was very much felt. He had very decided views,
which were always listened to with much respect and regard
by many older artists who seemed to recognise his genius."
The truth probably is that Whistler and Fantin influenced
each other, as fellow students will. They worked in sym-
pathy, and the understanding between them was complete.
They not only studied together at the Louvre, but both
joined the group who went to Bonvin's studio to work from
the model under the direction of Courbet.

With Courbet, we come to an influence which cannot be
doubted, much as Whistler regretted it as time went on.
M. Oulevey remembers Whistler going to call on Courbet
once, and saying enthusiastically as he left the house : *' C*est
un grand homme ! " and certainly, for several years, his
pictures showed how strong this influence was. M. Duret
thinks this influence is revealed in another way, and sees
in Courbet 's "Manifestoes" forerunners of the letters
Whistler wrote at a later date to the papers. Courbet,
whatever mad pranks he might play with the bourgeois,
was seriousness itself when there was any question of art,
and the men who studied under him learned to be serious,
Whistler no less than the rest of them.

The best proof of Whistler's industry is his work ; his
pictures and prints, which are truly amazing in quality
and quantity for the student who, Sir Edward Poynter
would have us believe, worked in two or three years only
as many weeks. It would be nearer the truth to say that
he never stopped working. Everything he enjoyed as
student he turned to his profit as artist. The women he
danced with at night were his models by day : Fumette,
who, as she crouches, her hair loose on her shoulders, in
that early etching, looks the tigresse, capable of tearing up
J 855-59] 69

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

anything in a passion ; and Finette, the dancer in a famous
quadrille, who, when she came to London, was announced
as " Madame Finette in the cancan, the national dance of
France." All his friends had to pose for him : Drouet, in
that fine plate, done, he says, in two sittings, one of two
and a half hours, the other of an hour and a half ; Axenfeld,
the brother of the famous physician ; Becquet, the sculptor-
musician, dead a few months now, the greatest man who
ever lived to his friends, to the world unknown ; Astruc,
painter, sculptor, poet, editor of L' Artiste, of whom his wife
said that he was the first man since the Renaissance who
combined all the arts, but who is only remembered in Whistler's
print ; Delatre, the printer ; Riault, the engraver. Bibi
Valentin was the son of another engraver. And there is
the amusing pencil sketch of Fantin, in bed on a bitter winter
day, working away in his overcoat, muffler and top hat,
trying to keep warm. The streets where Whistler wandered,
the restaurants where he dined became his studio for the time.
At the house near the Rue Dauphine he etched Bibi Lalouette ;
his Soupe a Trois Sous * was done in a cabaret kept by Martin,
whose portrait is in the print and who was famous in the
Quartier for having won the Cross of the Legion of Honour
by his bravery at an earlier age than any man ever decorated,
and then promptly losing it by some shameful deed. And
so we might go through Whistler's etchings of this period.
There is hardly one that is not a record of his daily life and
of the people among whom he lived, though to make it such
a record was the last thing he was thinking of. But he took
his work with him everywhere, and not one of the young
men of his generation who set out to find their subjects in
the world they knew and the things about them, succeeded
so consistently and so brilliantly.

* Mr. Ralph Thomas says, " While Whistler was etching this, at twelve o'clock
at night, a gendarme came up to him and wanted to know what he was doing.
Whistler gave him the plate upside down, but officialism could make nothing of it."
70 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

Whistler's first set of etchings was published in November
1858, when he had been in Paris only a little more than
three years. The prints were not the first he made after
leaving Washington ; a portrait of himself, another of his
niece, Annie Haden, the Dutchman holding the Glass are as
early, if not earlier ; but they were the first published as a
set — the French Set — a form of publication he repeated
several times. There were twelve prints, some done in
Paris, some during the journey to the Rhine, some in London."]

Liverdun Little Arthur

La Retameuse La Vieille aux Loques

En Plein Soleil Annie

The Unsafe Tenement La Marchande de Moularde

La Mere Gerard Fumette

Street at Saverne The Kitchen

There was also an etched title, with his portrait, for which
Ernest, putting on the big hat, sat. Whistler dedicated the
set to mon vieil ami Seymour Haden, and issued and sold it
himself for two guineas. Delatre printed the plates for him,
and, standing at his side, M . Drouet says, Whistler learned the
art. Delatre's shop was at 171 Rue St. Jacques, the room
described by the De Goncourts, with the two windows
looking out on a bare garden, the wheel, the man in grey
blouse standing by it, the old noisy clock in the corner, arid
the sleeping dog, and the children peeping in at the door ;
the room where they waited for their first proof with the
emotion they thought no other occupation or amusement
could give. Drouet says that Whistler himself never printed
at this time. But Oulevey remembers a little press in the
Rue Campagne-Premiere, and Whistler pulling the proofs
for the occasional friend who came to buy them. He was
then already hunting for beautiful old paper, loitering at the
boxes along the quais, tearing out the fly-leaves from the fine
old books he found there. Passages in many plates of the

1855-59] 71

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

series, especially in La Mere Gerard and La Marchande de
Moutarde, are precisely like his work in The Coast Survey, No. 1.
For the only time, and as a result of his training at Washington,
his handling threatened to become mannered. But in some
of the prints, the Street at Saverne for instance, he had already
overcome his mannerism, while in others not in the series
but done during these years, like the Drouet, Soupe d Trois
Sous, Bibi Lalouette, he had perfected his early style of
drawing, biting and dry-point. We never asked him how
the French plates were bitten, but, no doubt, it was in the
traditional way by biting all over and stopping out. They
were drawn directly from Nature, as can be seen in his
portraits of places which are reversed in the prints. So far
as we know, he scarcely ever made a preliminary sketch.
We can recall none of his etchings at any period that might
have been done from memory, except the Street at Saverne,
the Venetian Nocturnes, and the Dance House, Amsterdam.
He sometimes suggested points on the plate with Chinese
white or water-colour, but this was all.

His first paintings in Paris undertaken as definite com-
missions were, he told us, copies he made in the Louvre.
They were done for Captain Williams, a Stonington man,
more familiarly known as " Stonington Bill," whose portrait
Whistler said he had painted before leaving home. " Stoning-
ton Bill '* must have liked it, for, when he came to Paris
shortly afterwards, he gave Whistler the commission to
paint as many copies at the Louvre as he chose, for twenty-
five dollars apiece. Whistler said he copied a snow scene
with a horse and a soldier standing by and another at its
feet, and never afterwards could remember who was the
painter ; the busy picture detective may run it to ground
for the edification of posterity. There was also a St. Luke
with a halo and draperies ; and a woman holding up a child
towards a barred window beyond which, seen dimly, was the
72 [1855-59

I_J ;

o -S

O s

h •§

H =»

53 •=

H £

s

* 1

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

face of a man ; and an inundation, no doubt The Deluge or
The Wreck. He was sure he must have made something
interesting out of them, he knew there were wonderful things
even then — the beginnings of harmonies and of purple
schemes — he supposed it must have been intuitive. An-
other Stonington man commissioned him to paint Ingres'
Andromeda chained to the rock — probably this was the
Angelina * of Ingres which he and Tissot are said to have
copied side by side ; and for all he knew, all these were still
at Stonington and shown there as marvellous things by
Whistler. To the list we had from him may be added the
Diana by Boucher in the London Memorial Exhibition,
owned by Mr. Louis Winans, and the group of cavaliers after
Velasquez, the one copyFantin remembered his doing. A study
of a nun was sent to the London Exhibition, but not shown,
with the name " Wisler " on the back of the canvas, not by
any means a bad study of drapery, which may have been, de-
spite the name, another of his copies, or done in a sketch class.

The first original picture painted in Paris was, he always
assured us, the Mere Gerardt in white cap, holding a flower,
that is now the property of Mr. Swinburne. There is another
portrait of her in the possession, we believe, of Messrs.
Colnaghi, and from M. Drouet we have heard of a third
which, for the moment anyhow, has vanished. Whistler
painted a number of other portraits, some it would probably
be impossible to trace, and a few are well known. One, a
difficult piece of work, he said, was of his father, after a
lithograph sent him for the purpose by his brother George.
A second was of himself in his big hat, the portrait owned by
Mr. Avery and catalogued as Whistler with Hat in the Paris
Memorial Exhibition. Two were studies of models : the Tete
de Paysanne, a woman in a white cap, younger than Mere

* We hear, however, that a copy of an Andromeda by him was shown at Mr.
Keppel's gallery in New York.
1855-59] 73

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Gerard, but her face much sterner, that belongs to the Com-
tesse de Beam ; and the Head of an Old Man Smoking, an
old pedlar of crockery whom Whistler came across one day
by chance in the Halles, brought to his studio and painted,
a full face with large brown hat, for long the property of
M. Drouet. But the best known and, in many ways, the
finest painting of this period, is The Piano Picture, as Whistler
called it. It contains the portrait of his sister At the Piano,
and of his niece, the " wonderful little Annie " of the etchings,
now Mrs. Charles Thynne, who gave him many sittings for
it, and to whom, in return, he gave the pencil sketches made
on the Rhine journey, which she lent to the London Memorial
Exhibition. The portraits " smell of the Louvre." The
method is acquired from close knowledge of the Old Masters.
'* Rembrandtish " is the usual criticism passed on these
early canvases, with their paint laid thickly on and their
heavy shadows. Indeed, it is evident that the portrait of
himself must have been done after long and careful study
of Rembrandt's Young Man in the Louvre. To his choice
and treatment of subjects, in his pictures as in his etchings,
he brought the uncompromising realism of Courbet, painting
only the people he knew, as he saw them, and not in clothes
borrowed from the classical and mediaeval wardrobes of the
fashionable studio. Yet at this stage, there is already the
personal touch : Whistler does not efface himself entirely
in his youthful devotion to his chosen masters. You feel it in
the way a simple head or a figure is placed on the canvas, but
especially where there is an opportunity for more elaborate
composition. The arrangement of the lines of the pictures
on the wall and the mouldings of the dado in At the Piano,
the harmonious balance of the spaces of black and white in
the dresses of the mother and her little girl, show the sense
of design, of pattern, which he brought to perfection in the
Mother, Carlyle and Miss Alexander. There was nothing
74 [1855-59

IN THE LATIN QUARTER

like it in the painting of the other young men, of Degas,
Fantin, Legros, Ribot, Manet ; nothing like it, for that matter,
in the work of the older man, their leader, who painted
L'Enterrement d Ornans and Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet.
M. Duret says that Whistler's fellow students, who had
immediately recognised his talent as etcher, now admitted
as generously his accomplishment as painter, which agrees
with Whistler's statement to us.

At the Piano was ready to be sent to the Salon of 1859.
He submitted it, together with two etchings.* The etchings
were accepted, the picture was rejected. It may have been
because of what was personal in it ; a hint of strong personality
in the young usually fares that way at official hands. Fantin's
story is :

" One day, Whistler brought back from London the Piano
Picture, representing his sister and niece. He was refused with
Legros, Ribot and myself at the Salon. Bonvin, whom I knew,
interested himself in our rejected pictures, and exhibited them
in his studio, and invited his friends, of whom Courbet was one,
to see them. I recall very well that Courbet was struck with
Whistler's picture."

Side by side with it hung Les Deux Soeurs, one of the finest
pictures ever painted by Fantin, who also was exhibiting
in public for the first time ; some studies of still life by Ribot ;
and Legros' portrait of his father. The whole affair made
a scandal. The injustice of the rejection was flagrant, the
exhibitors at Bonvin's became famous, and Whistler's picture
impressed many artists besides Courbet. With its exhibition
Whistler's real student years ended. In one sense, he was
a student all his life — it was only in his last years that he
felt he was " beginning to understand," he often said. But
with the exhibition at Bonvin's he ceased to be simply the
student studying in the schools ; he was the artist working
in his own studio.

* We have been unable to find out their titles.
1855-59] 75

CHAPTER VIII. THE BEGINNINGS IN
LONDON. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN FIFTY-
NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE

AT this period, Whistler was continually coming and
going between Paris and London, where he stayed with
his sister, Lady Haden, at 62 Sloane Street, sometimes
bringing friends with him, Henri Martin, Legros or Fantin.
In 1859 he first invited Fantin, promising him glory and
fortune, in a letter which M. Benedite thinks lyrical in its
enthusiasm, and which was the beginning of an intimate
correspondence between the two friends. Whistler's letters,
now at the Luxembourg, published in part by M. Benedite
in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, are not only delightful but
largely autobiographical. " Whistler talked about me at
this moment to his brother-in-law, Seymour Haden, who urged
me to come to London ; he had also talked about me to
Boxall," Fantin says in his notes. " I should like it
known that it was Whistler who introduced me to
England."

Fantin arrived in time for them to go together to the
Academy, which still gave its exhibitions in the east end
of the National Gallery. Whistler was exhibiting there
for the first time. He had no pictures, but Two Etchings
from Nature, a perplexing title for all his etchings were
" from Nature," were accepted and hung in the little octagon
room, or " dark cell," as the critics called it, reserved for
black-and-white. " Les souvenirs les plus vifs que j'ai
conserves de ce temps a Londres," Fantin wrote, " etaient noire
76 [1859

AT THE PIANO (THE PIANO PICTI-HE)

•*• ••''**••

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

admiration pour Vexposition des tableaux de Millais a
V Academy"

Millais was showing The Vale of Rest, abused, except " by
the Rossettis and their clique," to a degree he thought " never
equalled in the annals of criticism." He had not then quite
abandoned Pre-Raphaelitism, and the two young men, fresh
from Paris studios, recognised in his work the realism which,
though conceived and expressed so differently, was the aim
of the Pre-Raphaelites as of Courbet.

Seymour Haden, who had already etched some of his finest
plates, was kind and helpful to his young visitors. He
bought copies from Fantin, among them one of the many
Fantin made of Veronese's Marriage Feast at Cana. He also
purchased the pictures of Legros, who was " at one moment
in so deplorable a condition," Whistler said to us, " that
it needed God or a lesser person, to pull him out of it. And
so I brought him over to London, and for a while he worked
in my studio." He had, before coming, sold a church
interior to Haden, who liked it, though he found the floor
out of perspective. One day he took it to the room upstairs
where he did his own etchings, and turned the key. When
it reappeared the floor was in perspective according to Haden.
A new gorgeous frame was bought, and the picture was
hung conspicuously in the drawing-room. Whistler thought
Haden seemed restive when he heard that Legros was coming,
but nothing was said. The first day Legros was impressed :
he had been accustomed to seeing himself in cheap frames,
if in any frame at all. But, gradually, he looked beyond
the frame, and Haden's work dawned upon him — that he
could not stand. What was he to do ? he asked Whistler.
Run off with it, Whistler suggested. They got it down,
called a four-wheeler and carried it away to the studio —
" our own little kopje," for Whistler told us the story in the
days of the Boer War. Haden discovered his loss as soon
1859] 77

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

as he got home and, in a rage, hurried after them to the
studio. But when he saw it there on an easel, when, instead
of attempting to hide it, Legros was openly restoring the
perspective according to his idea, well, there was nothing to
say. All the same, it must have been aggravating.

Haden even endured Ernest, who had not yet caught up
with the seasons, and who went about in terror of the butler,
taking his daily walks in slippers rather than expose his boots
to the servants, and enchanting Whistler by asking : " Mais,
mon cher, qu'est que c'est que cette espbce de cataracte de Niagara? "
when Haden turned on the shower-bath in the morning.

Whistler fell in at once with the English students and their
friends whom he had known in Paris : Poynter, ^ Arm-
strong, Luke and Aleco lonides. Du Maurier came back
from Antwerp in 1860, and for several months he and Whistler
lived together in Newman Street. Mr. Armstrong remembers
their studio, with a rope like a clothes-line stretched across,
and, floating from it, a bit of brocade no bigger than a hand-
kerchief, which was their curtain to shut off the corner used
as bedroom. There was hardly ever a chair to sit on, and
often with the brocade a towel hung from the line : their
decoration and drapery. Du Maurier's first Punch drawing
— in a volume full of crinolines and Leech (vol. xxxix.,
October 6, 1860) — shows the two friends, shabby, smoking,
calling at a photographer's, to be met with an indignant
" No smoking here, sirs ! " followed by a severe " Please
to remember, gentlemen, that this is not a common Hartist's
Studio ! " The figure at the door, with curly hair, top hat,
glass in his eye, hands behind his back holding the forbidden
cigarette, is unmistakably Whistler : a portrait even to
those who did not know him in his youth.

" Nearly always, on Sunday, he used to come to our house,"
Mr. lonides tells us, and there was no more delightful house
in London. Mr. Alexander lonides, the father, was a wealthy
78 i860

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

merchant with a talent for gathering about him all the
interesting people in town or passing through, especially
artists, musicians, actors and authors. Mr. Luke lo nicies
says that Whistler came also to their evenings and took part
in their private theatricals, and there remains the record of
one performance in a programme designed by Du Maurier,
with a drawing of himself, Whistler and Aleco lonides at the
top, while Luke lonides and his sister, Mrs. Coronio, stand
below, with the scroll of the dramatis personce between them.
He delighted in their masquerades and fancy dress balls,
once mystifying everybody by appearing in two different
costumes in the course of the evening, and winding up as a
sweep. He himself never lost his joy in the memory of Alma-
Tadema, on another of these occasions, as an " Ancient
Roman," in toga and eye-glasses, crowned with flowers —
" amazing," Whistler said, " with his bare feet and St. John's
Wooden eye ! "

Mr. Arthur Severn writes us :

" My first recollection of Whistler was at his brother-in-law's,
Seymour Haden (he and Du Maurier were looking over some
Liber Studiorum engravings), and then at Arthur Lewis' parties
on Campden Hill, charming gatherings of talented men of all
kinds, with plenty of listeners and sympathisers to applaud. It
was at these parties the Moray Minstrels used to sing, conducted
by John Foster, and when they were resting any one who could
do anything was put up. Du Maurier with Harold Sower used
to sing a duet, Les Deux Aveugles ; Grossmith half-killed us with
laughter (it was at these parties he first came out). Stacy
Marks, too, was always a great attraction, but towards the end
of the evening, when we were all thoroughly in accord about
everything, there used to be drowning yells and shouts for Whistler,
the eccentric Whistler ! He used to be seized and stood up on
a high stool, where he assumed the most irresistibly comic look,
put his glass in his eye, and surveyed the multitude, who only
screamed and yelled the more. When silence reigned he would
begin to sing in the most curious way, suiting the action to the
words with his small, thin, sensitive hands. His songs were in
i860] 79

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

argot French, imitations of what he had heard in low cabarets on
the Seine when he was at work there. What Whistler and
Marks did was so entirely themselves and nobody else, so original
or quaint, that they were certainly the favourites."

" Breezy, buoyant and debonnair, sunny and affectionate,"
he seemed to George Boughton, who could not remember
the time when " Whistler's sayings and doings did not fill
the artistic air," nor when he failed to give a personal touch,
a " something distinct " to his appearance. His " cool suit
of linen duck and his jaunty straw hat " were then conspicuous
in London, where any eccentricity of dress is more startling
than in Paris. In the Latin Quarter, Whistler had been able
to develop a peculiarity, or individuality, already noticeable
before he left America. Boughton refers to a flying trip to
Paris at this period, when he was " flush of money and lovely
in attire." Other old friends recall meeting him, armed with
two umbrellas, a white and a black, his practical, if sensational,
preparation for all weathers. Val Prinsep speaks of the
pink silk handkerchief stuck in his waistcoat, but this must
have been later. " A brisk little man, conspicuous from his
swarthy complexion, his gleaming eye-glass, and his shock
of curly black hair, amid which shone his celebrated white
lock " is Val Prinsep's further description of him in the
'fifties. But the white lock is not seen in any contemporary
painting or etching. It was first introduced, as far as we can
discover, in his portrait owned by Mr. McCullough and in
the etching, Whistler with the White Lock, 1879, though there
may be some earlier drawings showing it. We never asked
him about it, and his family, friends and contemporaries
whom we have asked, cannot explain it. Some say that it
was a birth-mark, others that he dyed all his hair save the
one lock. Many, seeing him for the first time, mistook it
for a floating feather. He used to call it the Meche de Silas,
and one explanation it amused him to give was that the
80 [I860

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

Devil caught those whom he would preserve by a lock of hair
which turned it white. Whatever its origin, Whistler always
cherished it with the greatest care.

Whistler had stumbled upon a period in England when,
though painters prospered, art was at a low ebb. Pre-
Raphaelitism was on the wane. Millais' election to the
Royal Academy had dissolved the Round Table, as Rossetti
said. Rossetti had dissociated himself from any phase or
movement. Holman Hunt was being approached to write
a history of Pre-Raphaelitism, as of something quite past.
No younger group of independents had come to take their
place. Of course here and there were interesting young men,
each working in his own fashion : Charles Keene, Boyd
Houghton, Albert Moore, and, a little later, Fred Walker
and George Mason. But with the exception of Charles
Keene, whom he always liked, and Albert Moore, whom he
was soon suggesting to Fantin as Legros' successor in the
Society of Three, Whistler saw little of them. He certainly
said little about them. Academicians were then at the high
tide of mid- Victorian success and sentiment. They puzzled
Whistler no less than he puzzled them.

" Well, you know, it was this way. When I came to London
I was received graciously by the painters. Then there was
coldness, and I could not understand. Artists locked them-
selves up in their studios — opened the doors only on the chain ; if
they met each other in the street they barely spoke. Models went
round silent, with an air of mystery. When I asked one where
she had been posing, she said, ' To Frith and Watts and Tadema.'
' Golly ! what a crew ! ' I said. ' And that's just what they says
when I told 'em I was a'posing to you ! ' Then I found out the
mystery : it was the moment of painting the Royal Academy pic-
ture. Each man was afraid his subject might be stolen. It was
the great era of the subject. And, at last, on Varnishing Day,
there was the subject in all its glory — wonderful ! The British
subject ! Like a flash the inspiration came — the Inventor ! — and
in the Academy there you saw him : the familiar model — the
I860] i : F 81

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

soldier or the Italian — and there he sat, hands on knees, head
bent, brows knit, eyes staring ; in a corner, angels and cogwheels
and things ; close to him his wife, cold, ragged, the baby in her
arms — he had failed ! The story was told — it was clear as day —
amazing ! — the British subject ! "

Into this riot of subject in the Academy of 1860, At the
Piano was sent, with five prints : Monsieur Astruc, Redacteur
du Journal V Artiste, an unidentified portrait, and three of
the Thames set. Whistler had given At the Piano, the
portrait of his sister and niece, to Seymour Haden : in a way,
he said,

" Well, you know, it was hanging there, but I had no particular
satisfaction in that. Haden just then was playing the authority
on art, and he could never look at it without pointing out its
faults and telling me it never would get into the Academy —
that was certain."

However, at the Academy it was accepted, Whistler's first
picture in an English exhibition. The Salon was not held
then every year, and he could not hope to repeat his success
in Paris. But in London, At the Piano was as much talked
about as at Bonvin's. It was bought by John Phillip, the
Academician (no relation whatever to the family into which
Whistler afterwards married). Phillip had just returned
from Spain, with,

" Well, you know — Spanish notions about things, and he
asked who had painted the picture, and they told him, a youth
no one knew about, who had appeared from no one knew where.
Phillip looked up my address in the catalogue, and wrote to me
at once to say he would like to buy it, and what was its price ? I
answered in a letter which I am sure, even then, must have been
very beautiful. I said that, in my youth and inexperience, I did
not know about these things, and I would leave to him the question
of price. Phillip sent me thirty pounds ; when the picture was
last sold, to Mr. Davis, it brought two thousand eight hundred ! "

Thackeray, Mrs. Richmond Ritchie tells us, " went to see
the picture of Annie Haden standing by the piano, and
82 [I860

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

admired it beyond words, and stood looking at it with real
delight and appreciation." It was the " only thing " George
Boughton " brought vividly away in his memories " of the
Academy. The critics could not ignore it. " It at once made
an impression," Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote. As " an eccentric
uncouth, smudgy, phantom-like picture of a lady at a piano-
forte, with a ghostly looking child in a white frock looking
on," it struck the Daily Telegraph. But the Athenceum,
having discovered the " admirable etchings " in the octagon
room, managed to see in the

" Piano Picture, despite a recklessly bold manner and sketchi-
ness of the wildest and roughest kind, a genuine feeling for colour
and a splendid power of composition and design, which evince
a just appreciation of nature very rare among artists. If the
observer will look for a little while at this singular production, he
will perceive that it ' opens out ' just as a stereoscopic view will
— an excellent quality due to the artist's feeling for atmosphere
and judicious gradation of light."

We quote these criticisms because the general idea is that
Whistler waited long for notice. He was always noticed,
both praised and blamed, never ignored, after 1859.

Whistler went back to Paris late in that year. December
1859 is the date of his Isle de la Cite, etched from the Galerie
d'Apollon in the Louvre, with Notre Dame in the distance,
and the Seine and its bridges between. It was his only
attempt to rival Me"ryon, and he succeeded very badly. The
fact that he gave it up when half done shows that he thought
so himself. Besides, he was much less in Paris now, for
though he always preferred life there, he had found his subjects
in London, and that was why his visits gradually lengthened,
why he could never stay away for long, why he soon made
London his home, as it continued to be, except for a few
intervals, until his death. It was not the people he cared
for, nor the customs. He was drawn by the beauty of the
i860] 83

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

place that not even Constable or Turner had felt with the
same intensity and understanding.

He was already at work on the river. In these first years
he dated his prints and pictures, as he seldom did later, and
1859 is bitten on one after another of the Thames plates.
He saw the river as no one had seen it before, in all its grime
and glitter, with its forest of shipping, its endless procession
of barges, its grim warehouses, its huge docks, its little
waterside inns. And, as he saw it, so he rendered it, as no
one ever had before — as it is. It was left to the American
youth to do for London what Rembrandt had done for
Amsterdam. There were eleven plates on the Thames
during this year alone. To make them, he wandered from
Greenwich to Westminster ; they included etchings like
Black Lion Wharf, Tyzac, Whiteley and Co., which he never
excelled at any period ; and in each the warehouses or bridges,
the docks or ships, or whatever incidents of river life appealed
to him by the way, are worked out with a mass and marvel
of detail. The Pre-Raphaelites, in their first ardour, had
never been more faithful to Nature and more minute in their
study of her. The series was a wonderful achievement for
the young man of twenty-five, never known to work by his
English fellow students, a wonderful achievement for an
artist of any age.

Those who thought he idled in Paris were as sure of his
application in London. " On the Thames, he worked
tremendously," Mr. Armstrong says, " not caring then to
have people about or to let any one see too much of his
methods." He stayed for months at Wapping, to be near
his subjects, though not cutting himself off entirely from
his friends. Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. lonides, M. Legros,
Du Maurier visited him. Mr. lonides recalls long drives,
down by the Tower and the London Docks to get to the place,
as out of the way now as then. He says Whistler lived in
84 [I860

DESIGN FOR PROGRAMME BY I)U MAUIUER

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

a little inn, rather rough, frequented by skippers and bargees,
close to Wapping steamboat pier. But there is no doubt
that much of his work was done from Cherry Gardens, on the
other side of the river. Unfortunately it was not until after
his death that we looked into this matter. At any rate, if
he lived at Wapping, he worked a great deal at Cherry Gardens,
also often from boats and barges, he told us, and this one
can see in the prints. Sometimes he would get stranded in
the mud, and at others cut off by the tide. " When his
friends came," Mr. Armstong writes us, " they dined at an
ordinary there used to be. People who had business at the
wharves in the neighbourhood dined there, and Jimmie's
descriptions of the company were always humorous." Mr.
lonides drove down once for a dinner-party Whistler gave at
his inn :

" The landlord and several bargee guests were invited. Du
Maurier was there also, and after dinner we had songs and
sentiments. Jimmie proposed the landlord's health — he felt
flattered, but we were in fits of laughter. The landlord was
very jealous of his wife, who was rather inclined to flirt with
Jimmie, and the whole speech was chaff of a soothing kind
that he never suspected."

Another and more frequent visitor to Wapping was
Sergeant Thomas, one of those patrons who recognise the
young artist and appear when this recognition is most needed.
He bought drawings and prints from Holman Hunt and
Legros when they were scarcely known, and he helped Millais
through difficult days. Whistler had issued his French Set
of etchings in London in 1859 : Twelve Etchings from Nature
by James Abbott Whistler, London. Published by J. A.
Whistler. At No. 62 Sloane Street, which was Haden's
house. The price, as in Paris, was for Artist's Proofs on
India, two guineas. Sergeant Thomas saw the prints and
their merit, got to know Whistler, and arranged for the
further publication of the French Set, and the Thames
i860] 85

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

etchings, at first issued separately from the shop at No. 39
Old Bond Street, where he had established his son, Edmund
Thomas, as art dealer.

Mr. Percy Thomas, a younger son, has told us that, as a
little fellow, he used to go with his father by boat to Wapping,
and that his father and brother posed for two of the figures
— the third is Whistler — in The Little Pool. He has also
told us that much of the printing was done at 39 Old Bond
Street, where the family lived in the upper part of the house.
A press was in one of the small rooms, and Whistler would
come in the evening, when he happened to be in town, to
bite and try his plates. Sometimes he would not get to work
until half-past ten or eleven. In those days, he always put
his plate in a deep bath of acid, still keeping to the technical
methods of the Coast Survey.* Sergeant Thomas, in his
son's words, was " great for port wine," and he would fill
a glass for Whistler, and Whistler would put the glass by the
bath, and then work a little on the plate and then stop to
sip the port, and he would say : " Excellent ! very good
indeed ! " and they never knew whether he meant the wine
or the work. And always, the charm of his manner and his
courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. Sergeant
Thomas brought Delatre over from Paris. He was the only
man, according to Thomas, who could print Whistler's
etchings as the artist would have printed them himself.
" Nobody," the son wrote in his catalogue, " has ever printed
Mr. Whistler's etchings with success except himself and
M. Delatre," and to-day many people are of the same opinion.
Whistler's relations with Sergeant and Edmund Thomas
were pleasant while they lasted. But they did not last long.
The son cared less for art than the law, and in his shop he

* We have since learned that the Coast Survey plates were banked up with war
and the acid poured over them. This is supposed to have been the method of
Rembrandt.

86 [I860

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

would sit at his desk reading his law books, never looking
up nor leaving them, unless some one asked the price of a
print or drawing. A successful business is not run on those
lines, and in the course of a few years he gave up art altogether
for the law, to his own great advantage.

I860] 87

CHAPTER IX. THE BEGINNINGS IN
LONDON. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
FIFTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN SIXTY-
THREE CONTINUED

WHISTLER, in 1860, devoted much time to painting on
the river and less to etching, though the fine Bother-
hithe belongs to this year. One picture he described in a
letter to Fantin. " Chut ! rCen parle pas a Courbet " was
his warning, as if he was afraid to trust so good a subject
to any one. It was to be a masterpiece, he had painted it
already three times, and he sent a sketch, which M. Duret
has reproduced in his Whistler. M. Duret, unable to trace
the picture, thought he might perhaps never have carried it
beyond the sketch. But it was finished : the Wapping
shown in the Academy of 1864, a proof of how long, even then,
Whistler often kept his pictures before exhibiting them.
In 1867, he sent it to the Paris Exhibition. It was bought
by Mr. Thomas Winans, taken to Baltimore, where it is
now the property of his daughter, Mrs. Hutton. Whistler
wanted to exhibit it at Goupil's in 1892, but could not get
it over in time. Never seen in England, nor on the Continent,
since 1867, it has been practically forgotten. It was painted
from an inn, The Angel, on the water-side at Cherry Gardens,
which exists to-day, one of a row of old houses with over-
hanging balconies. In the foreground, in a shadowy corner
of the inn balcony, is a sailor, for whom a workman from
Greaves' shipbuilding yard, Chelsea, sat ; next to him,
M. Legros, and, her back turned to the Thames, the girl with
88 [i860

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

copper-coloured hair, of whose strange beauty Whistler
wrote to Fantin, "Joe," the model afterwards for The
White Girl and The Little White Girl. Beyond, on the river,
are the little square-rigged ships that so often anchor there,
and on the opposite side is the long line of Wapping ware-
houses, which gave the name to the picture. One who saw
it then writes that artists feared " Joe's " slightly open shirt
would prevent the picture being hung in the Royal Academy.
But Whistler insisted that, if it was rejected on that account,
he would open the shirt more and more every year until he
was elected and hung it himself.

He also painted The Thames in Ice this year (1860), ap-
parently, from the same inn at Cherry Gardens. It was
called, when first exhibited, The Twenty-fifth of December,
1860, on the Thames. For an Idle Apprentice, it was a curious
way of spending Christmas Day. Whistler told us that Haden
bought it for ten pounds, ample pay, he thought : three
pounds for each of the three days Whistler spent in painting
it, and a pound over. To Whistler, the pay seemed anything
but ample. " You know," he said to us, " my sister was in
the house, and women have their ideas about things, and
I did what she wanted, to please her ! " The picture is now
in Mr. Freer's collection.

Two other pictures of 1860 are the portrait of Mr. Luke
lonides with long, brown beard, and The Music Room. In
both, the influence of the Louvre and Courbet is evident.
The portrait has the heavy painting of At the Piano, though
it is much more brilliant. But the other picture marks a
tremendous advance.

Fantin could not have been more conscientious in rendering
the life about him exactly as he found it than Whistler was
in The Music Room ; only, the room in the London house,
with its gay chintz curtains and draperies, has none of the
sombre simplicity of the interior where Fantin's sisters sit

I860] 89

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

with their embroidery and books. Fantin's home gave him
an austerity he knew how to make beautiful ; to Whistler,
the Hadens' house gave colour — Harmony in Green and
Rose was his later title for the picture — and clear, cool light.
He emphasised the gaiety by introducing a strong black
note in the riding-habit of the standing figure, Miss Boot,
a connection of the Hadens by marriage, repeating it in the
reflection of Lady Haden in the mirror, while the cool light
from the window falls on " wonderful little Annie," in the
same white frock she wears in The Piano Picture. Mrs.
Thynne (Annie Haden) writes us :

" I was very young at the time of the music-room pictures
being painted, and beyond the fact of not minding sitting, in
spite of the interminable length of time, I do not know that I
can say more. It was a distinctly amusing time for me. He
was always so delightful and enjoyed the ' no lessons ' as much
as I did. One day in The Morning Call [the first name of The
Music Room] * picture, I did get tired without knowing it, and
suddenly dissolved into tears, whereupon he was full of the most
tender remorse, and rushed out and bought me a lovely Russia
leather writing set, which I am using at this very moment ! The
actual music-room still exists in Sloane Street, though the present
owners have enlarged it, and the date of the picture must have
been in '60 or '61, after his return from Paris. It was then he
gave me the pencil sketches I lent to the London Memorial
Exhibition. I had kept them in an album he had also brought
me from Paris, with my name in gold, stamped outside, of which
I was very proud. We were always good friends, and I have
nothing all through those early days but the most delightful
remembrance of him."

The picture became the property of Whistler's niece, Mrs.
Reveillon, George Whistler's daughter, and was carried off
to St. Petersburg, never to return to London until Whistler's
exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in 1892. It is now owned
by Colonel Hecker of Detroit.

* It will be noted that this picture, within a very few years, was described
under three titles. The confusion now existing in titles made or accepted by
Whistler was the result of his own vagueness.
90 [1861

f -

THE MUSIC BOOM
(Harmony im Green taut Rote)

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

Lately it has become the fashion to say that Whistler had
not mastered his trade, and could not manage his materials
in oils. These early pictures are technically as accomplished
as the work of any of his contemporaries, and statements
that he knew just enough for his own needs are altogether
beside the mark. Whistler never was taught, few artists are,
the chemistry of his trade, and some of his paintings have
suffered in consequence. The Music Room and The Thames
in Ice, so far as we can remember, are wonderfully fresh
and not cracked at all. They were probably painted more
directly, certainly more thinly, than the Wapping, in which
the paint seems to be as thickly piled as in the Piano Picture,
which is also cracked. This no doubt came from his working
over them repeatedly, probably on bad grounds. He had
the painting of Wapping by him four years before he exhibited
it. Though started down the river in 1860, it contains a
portrait of one of Greaves' men, whom he did not see for
a year or two afterwards. Of two pictures painted at the
same period, one, like the Wapping, may be badly cracked,
and another, like the Thames in Ice, may be in perfect
condition, which is probably due to his want of know-
ledge of the chemical properties of his paints and mediums.
Later in life, Whistler gave great attention to this matter.

Mrs. Thynne stood for another portrait in 1860, the
beautiful dry-point Annie Haden, in big crinoline and soup-
plate hat, and this was the year when Whistler made the
portraits of Ms friend Axenfeld, the wood-engraver Riault,
and " Mr. Mann." The next year, 1861, there were more
plates on the river, now on the Upper as well as the Lower
Thames. All this work was making him known to English
etchers and printers. For two of the plates of 1861, the
Junior Etching Club found a place when, a year later, they
published Passages from Modern English Poets, with their
etchings as illustrations ; and Whistler, occasionally trying
1861] 91

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

his plates at the press of Day and Son, came into contact
with the man, then a lad, he afterwards called " the best
printer in England," Mr. Frederick Goulding, who sends us
the following recollections of the time :

" What can I say about Whistler printing ? I niind me I
first knew him about 1859, when he used to come to the printing
house where I was apprenticed (the old firm of Day and Son —
in Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields) and print himself at my
father's press. I used some imes to act as his ' devil ' grinding
the ink, and turning the press, and so on.

" I think the first plate I actually ' proved ' for him was in
1861 — The Punt — he used to come frequently in the eighteen-
seventies, and I then printed a good many plates for him.

" After that he had a printing and etching room at the top of
his house in Cheyne Walk, where I used to go and print with
him, and afterwards at the White House at Tite Street, where
we spent many a pleasant hour printing, and many a bit of fun
we had in experimenting and printing in different ways.

" After that he practically took to printing his plates himself,
and put into the printing his own individuality as much as in
all the other work he did. No two proofs were ever alike — nor
do I expect he intended them to be — but they were all Whistler.

" Of course, at different periods of his life, he varied the way
of printing, as he did his etching. Sometimes it was very ' fat '
printing — at other times he would depend absolutely on his
etched lines. This more especially during the latter part of his
life — but wherever, or whatever, he printed, it was always
individual, and always Whistler."

Whistler once told us that he worked about three weeks
on each of the Thames plates. He therefore must have
spent on dated plates alone thirty-six weeks in 1861, leaving
but fourteen weeks for other work and for play. Some of
them are much less elaborate than the Drouet which,
M. Drouet says, was done in five hours, so that it seems
difficult to reconcile the two statements. But then it was
about the Black Lion Wharf, one of the fullest of detail, that
we especially asked Whistler. We had many discussions
92 [1861

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

with him about them. Whistler always maintained that they
were very youthful performances, and J. as strongly
maintained that that had nothing to do with the matter ;
that he never surpassed the wonderful drawing and com-
position and biting. He always insisted that his later
work in Venice and in Holland was a great development, a
great advance, and his final answer always was : " Well, you
like them more than I do ! " But there is no doubt that
the Thames plates, notably the Black Lion Wharf, have, for
artistic rendering of inartistic subjects, and for perfect biting,
never been approached by anybody.

Whistler saw something of the Upper Thames when he
stayed with Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Edwards, whose house at
Sunbury, was always a pleasant one to visit. There he was
sure to meet friends, two of whom figure in his dry-point
Encamping : W. M. Ridley, the artist and Traer, Haden's
assistant, not " Freer," as he has long masqueraded in Mr.
Wedmore's pages. Whistler introduced Fantin to Mr. and
Mrs. Edwards. To the " jolies journees chez Edwards a
Sunbury " Fantin refers in a note for 1861. Mrs. Edwards
wrote us shortly before her death :

" Whistler often came to see me, turning up always when
least expected, perhaps driving down in a hansom cab from
London. At that time there was no railway at Sunbury ;
Hampton Court three miles distant. He might send a line to
be met by boat at Hampton Court. He was always very eccentric.''

Doubtless the driving down was an eccentricity. But
Whistler knew he might see some " foolish sunset," or a
Nocturne, on the way, and so the drive was worth it to him.
" We had a large boat with waterproof cover," Mrs. Edwards
added ; " my husband and friends several times went up
the river and slept in the boat. Whistler went once," when
he probably did the plate Encamping, and certainly, in
Mrs. Edwards' words, " got rheumatism." It had been his
1861] 93

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

trouble ever since the St. Petersburg days. He could not
risk exposure.

Whistler, though not yet settled in London, sent work
regularly to the Academy, where it was an unfailing cause of
difference among the critics. He showed his Mere Gerard
(Mr. Swinburne's picture) in 1861. It is curious to read
some of the criticisms. The Athenceum described the picture
as "a fine, powerful-toned and eminently characteristic
study." The Daily Telegraph thought it

" far fitter hung over the stove in the studio than exhibited at
the Royal Academy, though it is replete with evidence of genius
and study. If Mr. Whistler would leave off using mud and clay
on his palette and paint cleanly, like a gentleman, we should be
happy to bestow any amount of praise on him, for he has all the
elements of a great artist in his composition. But we must
protest against his soiled and miry ways."

It seemed a good, serious study of an old woman, and nothing
more, when we saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition,
and the appallingly low level of the Academy alone can
explain the attention it attracted.

Whistler was back in France in the summer of 1861, painting
The Coast of Brittany, a picture that might have been signed
by Courbet, an arrangement in brown under a cloudy sky, a
stretch of sand in the foreground, black and brown rocks
where a peasant girl sleeps, and a blue sea beyond. It was
" a beautiful thing," Whistler said once when writing of it
years afterwards. At Perros Guirec he made his splendid
dry-point, The Forge. Another print of this year is the
rare dry-point of " Joe," who, for a while, reappeared in
Whistler's work as often as Saskia in Rembrandt's. She
was Irish, a Roman Catholic. Her father has been described
to us as a sort of Captain Costigan, and " Joe " — Joanna,
Mrs. Abbott — as a woman of next to no education, but of
keen intelligence who, before she had ceased to sit to Whistler,
knew more about painting than many painters, had become
94 [186]

THE COAST OF BRITTANY

THE BLUE WAVE

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

well read, and had great charm of manner. Her value to
Whistler as a model was enormous, and she was an important
element in his life during the first London years. She was
with him in France in 1861-2, going to Paris in the winter
to give him sittings for the big White Girl, which he had begun
and was painting in a rtudio he took for the purpose in the
Boulevard des Batignolles, and hung, it is said, all in white.
Courbet met her, and, looking at the copper-coloured hair,
was forced to see beauty in the beautiful. He painted her
twice, though perhaps not that winter ; once as La Belle
Irlandaise, and once as Jo, femme tflrlande. Whistler's
small study of Joe, Note Blanche, lent by Mrs. Sickert to the
Paris Memorial Exhibition, was doubtless done in the Boule-
vard des Batignolles in 1861, for the technique is not only
like Courbet's, but somewhat resembles that of the Piano
Picture. M. Drouet remembers breakfarts in the studio,
Whistler cooking.

He fell ill before the end of the winter. Miss Chapman
says he was poisoned by the white lead he used in the picture.
Her brother, a doctor, recommended a journey to the Pyrenees,
where some of his family were spending the winter. At
Guethary, Whistler was almost drowned when bathing,
carried out by the undertow, as he wrote to Fantin. It was
sunset, the sea was very rough, he was

" caught in the huge waves, swallowing gallons of salt water.
I swam and I swam, and the more I swam the less near I came to
the shore. Ah ! my dear Fantin, to feel my efforts useless and
to know people were looking on saying, ' But the Monsieur amuses
himself, he must be strong ! ' I cry, I scream in despair — I
disappear three, four times. At last they understand. A brave
railroad man rushes to me, and is rolled over twice on the sands.
My model hears the call, arrives at a gallop, jumps in the sea like
a Newfoundland, manages to catch me by the foot, and the two
pull me out." *

* See Duret's Whistler. /

1862] 95

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

At Biarritz, he painted The Blue Wave, a great sea rolling
in and breaking on the shore under a fine sky, but quite
unlike the Coast of Brittany, though Courbet's influence is
still evident in the technique. Whistler painted few pictures
in which the composition the arrangement, is more obvious.
It is altogether an extraordinary piece of work and is owned
now by Mr. Alfred Attmore Pope. At Fuenterrabia Whistler
was in Spain, for the first and only time ; Spaniards from
the Opera-Comique in the street, men in beret and red blouse,
children like little Turks. He wanted to go further, to
Madrid, and he urged Fantin to join him. Together they
should look at The Lances and The Spinners, as together
they had studied at the Louvre. In another letter, he
promised to describe Velasquez to Fantin, to bring back
photographs. Such " glorious painting " is to be copied.
" Ah ! ' mon cher, comme il a du travailler," he winds up in
his enthusiasm. But the journey ended at Fuenterrabia.
Fantin could not join him. Madrid was put off for another
spring, for ever, a? it turned out, though the journey was
for ever being planned anew.

Whistler sent The White Girl to the Academy of 1862, with
The Twenty-fifth of December 1860 on \fhe Thames, Alone with
the Tide, the first title of The Coast of Brittany, and one etching,
Rotherhithe. The White Girl was rejected. The two other
pictures and the print were accepted, hung and praised. The
Athenceum compared the Rotherhithe to Rembrandt. Whistler
could scarcely be mentioned as an etcher without this com-
parison ; since Rembrandt his were " the most striking and
original " etchings, every one then agreed, Mr. W. M. Rossetti
being among the first in England to say so boldly. Alone
with the Tide was approved as " perfectly^expressed," and
The Twenty-fifth of December, as broad and vigorous, though
perhaps vigour was pushed over " the bounds of coarseness
to become mere dash." Other work he showed^" elsewhere

96 [1862

THE THAMES IX ICE

25M of December I860, ow //<e Thames)

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

was also praised. The Punt and Sketching, published in
Passages from Modern English Poets, were at once singled out
for admiration. Thames Warehouses and Black Lion Wharf
won him immediate recognition as " the most admirable
etcher of the present day," when sent to South Kensington
Museum where International Exhibitions were held during
several years. The White Girl alone failed to please.

In nothing had he been so completely himself as in this
picture. The artist is born to pick and choose, and group with
science, the elements contained in Nature that the result may
be beautiful, he wrote long afterward in the Ten o' Clock, and
The White Girl was his first attempt to conform to a principle
no one ever put so clearly into words. It was simply an
attempt, we know now, comparing the painting to the sym-
phonies and harmonies that came after. But at the time it
was disquieting in its defiance of accepted formulas. It was
without subject, according to Victorian standards, and the
arrangement of white upon white was more bewildering even
than the minute detail of the Pre-Raphaelites. This summer
(1862) the Berners Street Gallery was opened, " with the
avowed purpose of placing before the public the works of
young artists who may not have access to the ordinary
galleries." Maclise, Egg, Frith, Cooper, Poynter worked
their way in. But the manager had the courage to exhibit
The White Girl, stating in the catalogue that the Academy
had refused it. The Athenaeum was independent enough
to say that it was the most prominent picture in the collection,
though not the most perfect, for,

" able as this bizarre production shows Mr. Whistler to be, we
are certain that in a very few years he will recognise the reason-
ableness of its rejection. It is one of the most incomplete paintings
we ever met with. A woman in a quaint morning dress of white,
with her hair about her shoulders, stands alone in a background
of nothing in particular. But for the rich vigour of the textures,
we might conceive this to be some old portrait by Zucchero, or
1862] i : o 97

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

a pupil of his, practising in a provincial town. The faot.il
well done, but it is not that of Mr. Wilkio Collins* Woman in
White."

This criticism is not only characteristic of contemporary
opinion, but interesting as having brought in answer, from
Whistler, the first, as far as we can discover, of his long series
of letters to the press. He wrote that he had no intention
of illustrating Mr. Wilkie Collins' novel, which it happened
he had never read, and that his picture represented merely
a girl in white standing in front of a white curtain. The
critics, not ycl; his enemies, were spared the sting of his wit.
They, however, expressed disapproval strongly enough for
him to tell his friends that The White Girl enjoyed a succds
d'cxe" oration.

A very different sort of success awaited his Thames etchings
in Paris; where they were shown in a dealer's gallery. Baude-
laire saw them, and understood, as he was the first to under-
stand the work of Manet, Poe, Wagner, and so many others.
He wrote :

" Tout r/'ccmment, un jeune artiste amtricain, M. Whistler,
exposait a la galeric Martinet une serie d'eaux fortes, subtiles,
tveillces comme V improvisation et Inspiration, representant lea
bords de la Tamise ; merveilleux fouillis d'agres, de verguea, de
cordages ; diaos de brumes, de fourneaux et de fumeea tire-bouchon-
nees ; poeaie profonde et compliquee d'une vaste capitale."

According to Mr. W. M. Rossetti, Whistler was then living
in Queen's Road, Chelsea. He writes us :

" I fancy that the houses in Queen's Road have been much
altered since Whistler was there in 1862-63. They wore then
low (say two-storied), quite old-fashioned houses, of a cosy, homely
character, with small fore-courts. I have a kind of idea that
Whistler's house was No. 12, but this is quite uncertain to me.*

* Not only havo the houses boon much altered, but the very name of the street
has changed, and QUOOII'H Road is now Royal Hospital Road. The present No. 12
corresponds to Mr. Rossotti's description, but wo think it more likely — and he
does too — that Whistler lived in one of the little briok cottages of Paradise Row.
98 [1862

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

As my brother and I were much in that neighbourhood, to and
fro, prior to settling down in No. 16 Cheyne Walk, we came into
contact with Whistler, who every now and then accompanied
us on our jaunts. I forget how it was exactly that we got intro-
duced to him ; possibly by Mr. Algernon Swinburne, who was
also to be an inmate of No. 16. Either (as I think) before meeting
Whistler or just about the time we met him, we had seen one
or two of his paintings. At the Piano must have been one ; and
we most heartily admired him, and discerned unmistakably
that he was destined for renown."

The friendship may have led to Whistler's active interest
in the black-and-white then being produced in England, for
Rossetti and his little group had, in a way, revolutionised
English illustration, and it was now held to be as dignified
and as serious a form of art as any other. All the more
brilliant of the younger men were working for the illustrated
magazines, and it was natural that Whistler found a place
among them. He made six drawings in all, and they were
done in 1862. Four appeared in Once a Week : The Major's
Daughter, The Relief Fund in Lancashire, The Morning before
the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and Count Burckhardt. Two
were published in Good Words, illustrations to The First
Sermon. They are drawn in pencil, pen and wash, are all
full of character, and, in the use of line, are like his etchings.
They were engraved by the Dalziel Brothers and Mr. Joseph
Swain, the art editors. Mr. Strahan, the publisher of Once
a Week, writes us :

" These illustrations were arranged for by Edward Dalziel, and
I cannot say how he came to know the artist or his work, as Mr.
Whistler was young then, and, as far as I know, had not contri-
buted to any magazine. The average price we paid to artists
was nine pounds, and we reckoned that the same amount had
to be paid for engraving. As a matter of fact, the sum paid to
Mr. Whistler was nine pounds for each drawing."

In any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. He gave us to
understand that the house he took shortly after, in Lindsoy Row, was his first
in London. /

1862] 99

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

We showed Whistler once The Morning before the Massacre
of St. Bartholomew. " Well, now — not bad, you know — not
bad even then ! " he said, following, with that expressive
finger of his, the flowing line of the pose, and pointing to the
hand lost in the draperies. This drawing and The Major's
Daughter were the two he preferred in after years, and when
J. was preparing The History of Modern Illustration,
Whistler picked them out as " very pretty ones," that should
be reproduced, though we remember his saying that, if but
a single example of his work could be used, The Morning
before the Massacre should be selected, for it was " as delicate
as an etching, and altogether characteristic and personal."
The Count Burckhardt he did not care for, insisting that he
would rather not be represented at all if this were to be the
only example given in the book. It was never a favourite
of his, h6 added.

The four drawings of Once a Week were reprinted in Thorn-
bury's Legendary Ballads in 1876. Thornbury implies that
the drawings were made for it, and says of them :

" Some startling drawings by Mr. Whistler prove his singular
power of hand, strong artistic feeling, and daring manner."

Our copy belonged to George Augustus Sala. On the
margin of The Morning before the Massacre he wrote :

" Jemmy Whistler. — Clever, sketchy and incomplete, like
everything he has done. A loaf of excellent fine flour, but slack-
baked."

So Sala thought in 1883, and it is typical of the times.
Another important work of 1862 was The Last of Old

Westminster. Mr. Arthur Severn knows more about it than

any one, as his account to us explains :

" On my return from Rome to join my brother in his rooms in
Manchester Buildings, on the Thames at Westminster Bridge,
(where the New Scotland Yard now is), I found Whistler beginning
his picture of Westminster Bridge. My brother had given him
permission to use our sitting-room, with its bow-windows looking
100 [1862

ILLUSTRATIONS FROM "ONCE A WEEK'

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

over the river and towards the bridge. He was always most
courteous and pleasant in manner, and it was most interesting
to see him at work. The bridge was in perspective, still surrounded
with piles, for it had only just been finished. It was the piles
with their rich colour and delightful confusion that took his fancy,
not the bridge, which hardly showed. He would look steadily
at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then holding
his brush quite at the end, with no mahlstick, make a downward
stroke and the pile was done. I remember once his looking very
carefully at a hansom cab that had pulled up for some purpose
on the bridge, and in a few strokes he got the look of it perfectly.
He was a long time over the picture, sometimes coming only once
a week, and we got rather tired of it. One day some friends
came to see it. He stood it against a table in an upright position
for them to see, it suddenly fell on its face, much to my brother's
disgust, as he had just got a new carpet. Luckily Whistler's
sky was pretty dry, and I don't think the picture got any damage,
and the artist was most good-natured about my brother's
anxiety lest the carpet should have suffered.

" I had done some work at Rome. One of my drawings was
of an evening subject on the Aventine Hill, reflected in the Tiber.
It was very yellow — in fact, when I was painting it, a French
corporal and two privates came to look over me, and I heard
them ask their corporal what he thought of it. He shrugged his
shoulders, and said : ' For my part, it is like an omelette.' I
fancy Whistler rather thought the same, but was very kind in
saying what he could. Then he asked me if I had any raw umber,
to which I answered, no. Then he said : ' How can you ever
expect to become a Royal Academician without raw umber ? ' "

The Last of Old Westminster was finished for the Academy
of 1863, to which it was sent with six prints : Weary ; Old
Westminster Bridge ; Hunger jord Bridge ; Monsieur Becquet ;
The Forge; The Pool. The dignity of composition in the
picture and the vigour of handling, impressed all those who
saw it in the London Memorial Exhibition, though they had
to regret the shocking condition it then was in, cracked from
one end to the other. It failed to impress Academicians in
1863, and was badly hung, as the prints also were, repro-
1863]

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

ductive work being then, as now, preferred to original etching.
The White Girl, after its Berners Street success, was the
picture Whistler chose for the Salon. He took it over to Paris
himself, to Fantin's studio, there having it unrolled and
framed. No one can now say, probably no one could then,
why the strongest work of the strongest younger men was
rejected from the Salon of 1863. Fantin, Legros, Manet,
Bracquemond, Jongkind, Harpignies, Cazin, Jean-Paul
Laurens, Vollon, Whistler, were all refused. It was a scandal ;
1859 was nothing to it. The town was in an uproar which
reached the ears of the Emperor. Martinet, the dealer,
proposed to show the rejected pictures in his gallery.
But before this was definitely arranged, Napoleon III.
ordered that a Salon des Refuses should be held in the same
building as the official Salon, the Palais de ^Industrie. The
announcement was published in the Moniteur for April 24,
1863. The invitation to show was issued by the Directeur-
General of the Imperial Museums, and the exhibition opened
on May 15. The success was as great as the scandal. The
exhibition was the talk of the cafes ; it was parodied as the
Club des Refuses at the Varietes ; every one rushed to the
galleries. The rooms were crowded by artists, because, in
the midst of much no doubt weak and foolish, the best work
of the day was shown ; by the public, because of the stir it
made. The public laughed from a vague idea that it was a
duty to laugh. The show was caricatured as the Exposition
des Comiques, and it was said that never was a succes pour
rire better deserved. Zola described, in L'CEuvre, the gaiety
and cruelty of the crowd, always convulsed and hysterical in
front of La Dame en Blanc. Hamerton wrote in the Fine
Arts Quarterly :

" The hangers must have thought her particularly ugly, for

they have given her a sort of place of honour, before an opening

through which all pass, so that nobody misses her. I watched

102 [1863

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

several parties, to see the impression The Woman in White made
on them. They all stopped instantly, struck with amazement.
This for two or three seconds, then they always looked at each
other and laughed. Here, for once, I have the happiness to be
quite of the popular way of thinking."

On the other hand, Fernand Desnoyers, who wrote a
pamphlet on the Salon des Refuses, thought that Whistler
was " le plus spirite des peintres" and the picture the most
original that had passed before the jury of the Salon, altogether
remarkable, at once simple and fantastic, the portrait of a
spirit, a medium, though of a beauty so peculiar that the
public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly.
Paul Mantz wrote that it was the most important picture in
the exhibition, full of knowledge and strange charm, and his
article in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts is the more interesting
because he there describes the picture as a Symphonic du
Blanc some years before Whistler called it so himself, seeing
in it instead of eccentricity, only a carrying on of French
traditions, for had not, a hundred years earlier, painters shown
in the Salon similar studies of colour, of tone — of white upon
white?

The picture hardly explained the sensation of its first
appearance when we saw it with Miss Alexander, the Mother,
Carlyle, The Fur Jacket and Irving, in the London Memorial
Exhibition. But it seemed revolutionary enough in the
'sixties, to become the clou of the Salon des Refuses, though
this was the last thing Whistler wanted it to be. It eclipsed
even Manet's big Dtfeuner sur Vherbe, then called Le Bain.

Whistler was in Amsterdam with Legros, looking at the
Rembrandts with pleasure, at the Van der Heists with dis-
appointment, etching Amsterdam from the Tolhuis, no doubt
hunting for old paper, and adding to his collection of blue
and white, when the news came of the sensation his pictures
had ^made in Paris, and he wrote at once to Fantin. He
1863] 103

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

longed to be in Paris and in the movement. It was a delight
that the picture, slighted in London, should be honoured in
Paris. He was all impatience to know what was said in the
Cafe de Bade, the cafe of Manet and his friends, and by the
critics.

To add to his triumph in Paris, official honours were falling
to him in Holland and England. Some of his etchings were
in an exhibition at The Hague, though he always said he
did not know how they got there, and he was given one of
three gold medals awarded to foreigners : his first medal.
Though atrociously hung at the Academy, his prints were
honoured at the British Museum, where as many as twelve
were bought for the Print room in this one year.

The excitement did not keep him long from work, to which,
as he wrote to Fantin, wandering was a drawback. He felt
the need of his studio, of " the familiar all about him." The
" familiar " he loved best was in London, and when he returned
he began to look for a house of his own. It was fortunate for
him that his mother was now persuaded to leave America and
come to England. She had passed through the arduous times
of the Civil War, in which Whistler took the keenest interest as
a patriot and a " West Point man." She had been in Rich-
mond with her younger son, William, a surgeon in the southern
army, had run the blockade, and arrived in England just at
this critical moment.

Whistler no longer made the Hadens' house his home.
The relations of the brothers-in-law had become strained,
as it was unavoidable they should, both being men of strong
character and personality. There had been disputes about
pictures, and descents upon the conventional household of
strange creatures from Paris. Haden had had much to put
up with, while Whistler, the artist, resented the criticism of
Haden, the surgeon. One story we have from Whistler
explains the relations between the two, and though he never
104 [1863

SOUVENIR OF VELASQUEZ

(Chalk Drawing)

THE BEGINNINGS IN LONDON

gave a date, it can be appropriately told here. Haden was
always a little of the schoolmaster Whistler found him when
they first met ; one's older relatives have a way of forgetting
one can grow up. Once, when Whistler had done something
more enormous than ever in Haden's eyes, he had been
summoned to the mysterious room upstairs, and lectured
until he refused to listen to another word. He started down
the four flights of stairs, with Haden close behind, still
lecturing. At last the front door was reached. And then —
" Oh, dear ! " said Whistler, " I've left my hat upstairs, and
now we have got to go all through this again ! "

As there was no further question of Whistler living with
the Hadens, it was decided that he and his mother should
live together, and some of his most delightful years were
those that followed.

1863 105

CHAPTER X. CHELSEA DAYS. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE TO
EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX

WHISTLER'S first house in London was No. 7 Lindsey
Row, Chelsea, now 101 Cheyne Walk. It adjoins the
old palace of Lord Lindsey, which still stands, the original
building divided into several houses, stuccoed and modernised,
much of its stateliness gone, though the spacious stairway
and part of the panelling have been preserved. Whistler's
was a three-story house, with a garden in front, humble when
compared with the palaces Academicians were building.
" All these artists complain of nothing but the too great
prosperity of the profession in these days," Hamerton wrote
to his wife on one of his visits to London ; " they tell me
an artist's life is a princely one now." But Whistler lived
his own life, and from his windows he could paint what he
wanted. Only the road separated the house from the river ;
opposite was Battersea Church and a group of factory chim-
neys ; old Battersea Bridge stretched across ; and at night
he could see the lights of Cremorne.

At the end of the Row, two doors from Whistler's house,
the boat-builder, Greaves, lived. He had worked in Chelsea
for years. He had rowed Turner about on the river, and his
two sons were now to row Whistler. One of the sons, Mr.
Walter Greaves, has told us that Mrs. Booth, a big, hard,
coarse Scotchwoman, was always with Turner when he came
for his boat. Turner would ask Greaves what kind of a
day it was going to be, and if Greaves answered " Fine,"
106 [1863

CHELSEA DAYS

he would get Greaves to row them across to Battersea Church,
or to the fields, now Battersea Park. If Greaves was doubtful,
Turner would say : " Well, Mrs. Booth, we won't go far ; "
and afterwards, for the sons — boys at the time — Turner in
their memory was completely overshadowed by her. They had
also known Martin, the painter of big, Scriptural machines,
whose house was in the middle of the Row. It had a balcony,
and on fine moonlight nights, or nights of dramatic skies,
Greaves or one of the sons would knock him up, and keep
on knocking until they saw the old man in his night-cap on
the balcony, where he would get to work and paint the sky
until daylight. Greaves remembered, too, Brunei, who
built the Great Eastern, living at the end of the Row. Of
other associations, dating a couple of centuries before his
time, the little Moravian graveyard at the back was a reminder,
for the old Lindsey palace had been one of the first refuges
of Zinzendorf and the Brotherhood. The Row, indeed, was
a place of history. But Whistler was to make it more famous
than it ever had been.

The two Greaves, Walter and Harry, painted, and he had
them in his studio, teaching them by letting them work with
and for him. We have often heard him speak of them as
his " first pupils." From them he learned to row — " He
taught us to paint, and we taught him the waterman's jerk,"
Mr. Walter Greaves says. Whistler would start with them
in the twilight, and sometimes stay on the river all night,
lingering in the lights of Cremorne, drifting into the shadows
of the old bridge, or else he was up with the dawn, throw-
ing pebbles at their windows to wake them, and make
them come and pull him up or down stream. At night,
on the river and at Cremorne, he was never without brown
paper, and black and white chalk, with which he made
his notes for the Nocturnes and the seemingly simple, but
really complicated, fireworks pictures. In the Gardens it
1863] 107

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

was easy to put down what he wanted under the lamps.
On the river, he had to trust almost entirely to his
memory, sometimes only noting the reflections in white
chalk.

At one time, master and pupils attended a life class held
in the evening by M. Barthe, a Frenchman, in Limerston
Street, not far from the Row. Mr. J. E. Christie, another
student in the same class, writes us :

" Whistler was not a regular attender at the Limerston Street
Studio, but came occasionally, and always accompanied by two
young men — brothers — Greaves by name. They let out rowing-
boats on the Thames and Battersea Park. They simply adored
Whistler, and were not unlike him in appearance, owing to an
unconscious imitation of his dress and manner. It was amusing
to watch the movements of the trio when they came into the
studio (always late). The curtain that hung in front of the door
would suddenly be pulled back by one of the Greaves, and a trim,
prim little man, with a bright, merry eye, would step in with
' Good evening,' cheerfully said to the whole studio. After a
second's survey, while taking off his gloves, he would hand his
hat to the other brother, who hung it up carefully as if it were a
sacred thing — then he would wipe his brow and moustache with
a spotless handkerchief, then in the most careful way he arranged
his materials, and sat down. Then, having imitated in a general
way the preliminaries, the two Greaves sat down on either side
of him. There was a sort of tacit understanding that his and
their studies should not be subjected to the rude gaze of the general.
I, however, saw, with the tail of my eye, as it were, that Whistler
made small drawings on brown paper with coloured chalks, that
the figure (always a female figure) would be about four inches
long, that the drawing was bold and fine, and not slavishly like
the model. The comical part was that his satellites didn't
draw from the model at all, that I saw, but sat looking at
Whistler's drawing and copying, as far as they could, that.
He never entered into the conversation, which was unceasing,
but occasionally rolled a cigarette and had a few whiffs, the
Greaves brothers always requiring their whiffs at the same
moment. The trio packed up, and left before the others
always."
108 [1863

._

LINDSKV \10\V

No. 7 LINDSEY KOW

(First House)

No. 2 LINDSEY ROW

(Second House)

CHELSEA DAYS

Sometimes, in the evening, Whistler, with his mother,
would go to the Greaves' house after dinner, and work there.
Often he sent in dessert, that they might enjoy and talk
over it together. Then he would bring out his brown paper
and chalks, and make studies of different members of the
family, and of himself, or sketches of pictures he had seen,
working until midnight and after. He told Mr. Way once that,
in those days, he never went to bed until he had drawn a por-
trait of himself. Many of those portraits are in existence
and one is here reproduced. The sister was an accomplished
musician, and Whistler delighted in music, though he was
not too critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-
gurdy into his front garden, and have it ground under his
windows. Occasionally, the brothers played, so that Whistler
might dance. He was always full of drolleries and fun. He
would imitate a man sawing, or two men fighting at the door,
so cleverly that Mrs. Greaves never ceased to be astonished
when he walked into the room alone and unhurt. He
delighted in American mechanical toys, and his house was
full of Japanese dolls. One great doll, dressed like a man,
he would take with him, not only to the Greaves', but to
dinners at Little Holland House, where the Prinseps then
lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing
performances.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti was, by this time, well settled at
Tudor House (now Queen's House, the original name) not
far from Lindsey Row, and Mr. Swinburne and Mr. George
Meredith were living with him. Mr. W. M. Rossetti came
for two or three nights every week, and Frederick Sandys,
Charles Augustus Howell, William Bell Scott, and, several
years later, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton were constant
visitors.

For Rossetti, Whistler had a genuine affection. "A
charming fellow, the only white man in all that, crowd of
1863] 109

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

painters," we have heard him say again and again : " not
an artist, you know, but charming, and a gentleman." Mr.
Watts-Dunton says, on the other hand, that Rossetti got
exceedingly tired of Whistler after a while, and considered
him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a malicious
quick wit at the expense of others, and no real philosophy
or humour. But Whistler certainly never knew of any change
in Rossetti's failings towards him. Mr. Meredith writes us :

" I knew Whistler and never had a dissension with him, though
merry bouts between us were frequent. When I went to live in
the country, we rarely met. He came down to stay with me once.
He was a lively companion, never going out of his way to take
offence, but with the springs in him prompt for the challenge.
His tales of his student life in Paris, and of one Ernest, with whom
he set forth on a holiday journey with next to nothing in the
purse, were impayable"

It was inevitable that Whistler and Rossetti should disagree
in matters of art. Whistler asked Rossetti why he did not
frame his sonnets. Rossetti thought that " the new French
School," in which Whistler had been trained, was " simple
putrescence and decomposition." It is said that Rossetti
influenced Whistler. Whistler influenced him just as much.
They influenced each other in the choice of models, in a
certain luxuriance of type and the manner of presenting it,
an influence which was wholly superficial and transitory.

Upon many other subjects they did agree. Rossetti shared
Whistler's delight in drollery and his love of the fantastic.
No one understood better than Whistler why Rossetti filled
his house and garden with strange beasts. It was from
Whistler we heard of the peacock and the gazelle, who fought
until the peacock was left standing desolate with his tail
apart upon the ground ; the origin, we have always believed,
of the monkey and the parrot story. From Whistler, too, we
had the story of the bull — the bull of Bashan — bought at
Cremorne, and tied to a stake in the garden, where Rossetti
no [1863

CHELSEA DAYS

would come every day and talk to him, until once the bull
was so excited by this talk that he pulled up the stake and
made for Rossetti, who went tearing round and round a tree,
a little fat person with coat-tails flying, finally, by a supreme
effort, rushing up the garden steps just in time to slam the
door in the bull's face. Rossetti called his man and ordered
him to tie up the bull, but he, who had looked out for the
menagerie, who had gone about the house with peacocks
and other creatures under his arms, who had rescued arma-
dilloes from irate neighbours, who had captured monkeys
from the tops of chimneys, struck when it came to tying up
a bull of Bashan on the rampage, and gave a month's warning.
From Whistler also, we first had the story of the wombat,
bought at Jamrack's by Rossetti for the sake of its name.
Whistler was dining at Tudor House, and the wombat was
brought on the table with coffee and cigars. It was an
amazing evening, Meredith talking with, if possible, more
than his usual brilliancy, and Swinburne reading aloud
passages from the Leaves of Grass. But Meredith was
witty as well as brilliant, and the special target of his wit was
Rossetti, who, as he had invited two or three of his patrons,
did not appreciate the jest. The evening ended less amiably
than it had begun, and no one thought of the wombat until
a late hour, and then it had disappeared. It was searched
for high and low. Days passed, weeks passed, months
passed, and there was no wombat. It was regretted, for-
gotten. Long afterwards, Rossetti, who was not much of
a smoker, got out the box of cigars he had not touched since
that dinner. He opened it. Not a cigar was left, but there
was the skeleton of the wombat.

Whistler and Rossetti also agreed about many of the group
who met at Tudor House, though Whistler acutely felt what
appeared to him the disloyalty shown at a later time by
Swinburne and Burne-Jones. He was never, at any

1863] III

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

time so intimate with Burne-Jones as with Swinburne, who
often came to the house in Lindsey Row, not only for
Whistler's sake, but out of affection for Whistler's mother.
Miss Chapman tells us that Swinburne was once taken ill
there suddenly, and Mrs. Whistler nursed him until he was
well. Miss Chapman also remembers Swinburne sitting at
Mrs. Whistler's feet, and saying to her : " Mrs. Whistler,
what has happened ? It used to be Algernon ! " Mrs.
Whistler, though always the Puritan of old, had accepted
Whistler's friends and their ways in a surprisingly short time,
and said quietly, " You have not been to see us for a long
while, you know. If you come as you did, it will be Algernon
again." And he came, and the cordiality of their relations
lasted until the 'eighties when he published the article in the
Fortnightly Review which Whistler could not forgive.

Quarrels and distrust could never make Whistler deny the
charm of Charles Augustus Howell, a remarkable man, who
will always be remembered for the part he played in the
lives of some of the most distinguished people of his genera-
tion. Who he was, where he came from, his friends do not
seem to have known. He was supposed to be mysteriously
associated with high, but nameless, personages in Portugal,
and sent by them on a secret mission to England ; he was
said to have been involved in the Orsini conspiracy, and
obliged to fly for his life across the Channel. The unquestion-
able fact is that he was a man of unusual personal charm
and business capacity. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has written of
him :

" As a salesman — with his open manner, winning address, and
his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring
and of actual blague — Howell was unsurpassable."

He was, for a time, secretary to Ruskin ; he was Rossetti's
man of affairs ; he became Whistler's, though on a less
definite basis. He appears in published reminiscences of
112 [1863

THE WHITE GIRL

(Symphony in White, A'o. 1)

CHELSEA DAYS

him as the magnificent prototype of the author's agent of
to-day. His talk was one of his recommendations to both
Rossetti and Whistler. Rossetti always rejoiced in Ho well's
"Niagara of lies," and immortalised them in the following
limerick :

" There's a Portuguese person called Howell,
Who lays on his lies with a trowel ;

When I goggle my eyes,

And start with surprise,
'Tis at the monstrous big lies told by Howell."

Howell had just the qualities to enchant Whistler, who
described him as

" The wonderful man, the genius, the Gil Bias-Robinson
Crusoe hero out of his proper time, the creature of top-boots and
plumes, splendidly flamboyant, the real hero of the Picaresque
novel, forced by modern conditions into other adventures, and
along other roads."

There is something of the creature of top-boots and plumes
in Dunn's sketch of Howell in a letter to D. G. Rossetti lent
to us by his brother. Whistler gave Howell credit for more
than picturesqueness. He had the instinct for beautiful
things, Whistler said :

" He knew them and made himself indispensable by knowing
them. He was of the greatest service to Rossetti — he helped
Watts to sell his pictures and raise the prices — he acted as
artistic adviser to Mr. Howard, now Lord Carlisle. He had the
gift of intimacy — he was at once a friend, on closest terms of
confidence. He introduced everybody to everybody else, he
entangled everybody with everybody else, and it was easier to
get involved with Howell than to get rid of him."

Many years passed before there was any wish on Whistler's
part to get rid of him. He was soon as frequent a visitor at
Lindsey Row as at Tudor House. When he lived at Putney
Whistler used to take his morning pull up the river to break-
fast with him. Of none of his friends in those early Chelsea
1863] i : H 113

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

days did Whistler so often talk to us as of Howell, telling us,
one after another, the adventures of this modern rival of
Gil Bias and Pablo of Segovia : adventures in pursuit of old
furniture and china until he was known to, and loved and
hated by, every pawnbroker in London, until he seemed to
spend all his time in cabs filled with rare and beautiful things ;
adventures with creditors and bailiffs, one in especial, when
his collection of blue pots was saved by a device only Howell
could have invented, forty blue pots carried off in forty
four-wheelers ; adventures in the law-courts, where he was
complimented by the judge and awarded heavy damages by
the jury for nothing in particular ; adventures as vestryman,
giving teas to hundreds of school children ; adventures at
Selsea Bill, where three cottages were turned into a house for
himself and he swaggered in the village as a great personage,
finding an occupation in stripping the copper from an old
wreck that had been there for years, but never touched before ;
adventures ending eventually in the Paddon Papers, of which
there will be something to say when the date of their
publication is reached.

For Sandys, Whistler had a real, if humorous, affection,
though the two lost sight of each other during many years.
Sandys' work never interested Whistler, but Sandys, the
man, was a perpetual delight to him as the English counter-
part of his friends of the Latin Quarter. Like them, Sandys
was usually without a penny in his pocket, and, like them,
he faced the situation with calm and swagger, but he added
a magnificence they never, in their maddest moments,
pretended to. Accidents never separated him from his white
waistcoat, though he might have to carry it himself to the
laundry, or get his model, " the little girl," he called her,
to carry it for him. You were always meeting them with
the brown paper parcel, Whistler said, and at the nearest
friend's house he would stop, and five minutes later come

114 [1863

CHELSEA DAYS

out splendid in another immaculate white waistcoat. In
money matters he reckoned like a Rothschild. It was always :
** Huh ! five hundred," that he wanted. Late one afternoon,
as Whistler was going to Rossetti's, he met Sandys looking
unusually depressed. He stopped Whistler :

" Do, do try and reason with Gabriel, huh ! He is most
thoughtless. He says I must go to America, and I must have
five hundred, huh ! and go ! But, if I could go, huh ! I could
stay ! "

Whistler got to know others among Rossetti's friends,
drifting, with many artists, to Madox Brown's evenings
in Fitzroy Square :

" Once in a long while, I would take my gaiety, my sunniness,
to Madox Brown's receptions. And there were always the most
wonderful people — the Blinds, Swinburne, anarchists, poets and
musicians, all kinds and sorts, and, in an inner room, Rossetti
and Mrs. Morris sitting side by side in state, being worshipped,
and, fluttering round them, Howell with a broad red ribbon
across his shirt front, a Portuguese decoration hereditary in
the family."

Whistler also shared Rossetti's interest in spirits and the
manifestations that, during several years, agitated the little
circle at Tudor House. He told us once of the strange things
that happened when he went to stances at Rossetti's with
" Joe," and also when he and " Joe " tried the same experi-
ments in his studio. Once, a cousin from the South, long since
dead, talked to him, and told him much that no one else
could have known. He believed, but he gave up all such
practices when they threatened to become too engrossing,
for he felt that he would be obliged to sacrifice to them the
real work he had to do in this world.

Nothing, however, brought Whistler and Rossetti into
closer sympathy than their love for blue and white china,
Japanese prints, and Japanese design. Whistler was in Paris
in 1856, when Bracquemond " discovered " Japan in a little
1863] 115

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

volume of Hokusai, used for packing china, and rescued by
Delatre, the printer. It passed into the hands of Laveille,
the engraver, and from him Bracquemond obtained it.
After that, Bracquemond had the book always with him,
showing it to everybody, talking about it to everybody ;
and when, in 1862, Madame Desoye, who, with her husband,
had lived in Japan, opened her Oriental shop under the
arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, the enthusiasm spread at once
to Manet, Fantin, Tissot, Jacquemart and Solon. Baudelaire
and the De Goncourts were as ardent. In England, Japanese
and Chinese art, at a much earlier period, had been known
and appreciated, but only by the few. Rossetti was for
long supposed to have made it the fashion with the many.
But the excitement in Paris had begun before Rossetti
owned 'his first blue pot or his first Japanese colour-print.
Whistler brought the knowledge and his love for the art of
Japan with him to London. " It was he who invented blue
and white in London," Mr. Murray Marks assures us, and
Mr. W. M. Rossetti is as certain that his brother was inspired
by Whistler, who bought not only blue and white, but
sketch-books, colour-prints, lacquers, kakemonos, embroideries,
screens. " In his own house in Chelsea, facing Battersea
Bridge," Mr. Severn writes, " he had lovely blue and white,
Chinese and Japanese." The only decorations, except the
simple harmony of colour everywhere, were the prints on the
walls, a flight of Japanese fans in one place, in another shelves
of blue and white. People, afterwards, copying him un-
intelligently, stuck up fans anywhere, and hung plates from
wires as ornaments. Whistler's fans were arranged for a
beautiful effect of colour and line. His decorations be-
wildered people even more than the work of the then new
firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. The popular
Victorian artist covered his walls with tapestry, filled his
studio with costly things, and taught the public to measure
116 [1863

ONE OF THK BOARD

(Caricature matieitt West 1'oint]

WEST POIXT DRAWING

CHELSEA DAYS

beauty by its price, a fact overlooked by Whistler, though
not by the decorators in Red Lion Square.

Rossetti threw himself into the pursuit of blue and white
with his usual impetuosity. Henry Treffy Dunn, in his
Recollections of Rossetti, whose assistant he was, writes
that Rossetti and Whistler " each tried to outwit the other
in picking up the choicest pieces of blue to be met with " ;
that both were for ever hunting for " Long Elizas," a name
in which, Mr. W. M. Rossetti thinks, " possibly a witticism
of Whistler's may be detected." Howell joined in the
pursuit, and, as we should know without Dunn's assurance,
met with the " most astounding experiences and adventures."
A little shop in the Strand was one of their favourite haunts,
another was near London Bridge, where a Japanese print
was given away with a pound of tea. Farmer and Rogers
had an Oriental Warehouse in Regent Street. The firm
has long been dissolved, but the manager was Mr. Lazenby
Liberty, who afterwards opened his own shop on the other
side of Regent Street, and here, too, Whistler went, intro-
duced to Mr. Liberty by Rossetti. Mr. Liberty rendered
him many a service, and visited him to the last. Mr.
Murray Marks also imported blue and white, and he has
told us how the fever spread from Whistler and Rossetti to
the ordinary collector. Rossetti asked Mr. Marks one day
if he knew anything about blue and white. Mr. Marks
said, yes ; he could get Rossetti all he wanted, a ship-load
if he chose. Mr. Marks often ran over to Holland where
blue and white was quite common and still cheap, and he
picked up a lot of it, offering it to Rossetti for fifty pounds.
Rossetti happened to be hard up at the time, and could not
afford the price. But he came with Mr. Huth, who bought
all that Rossetti could not take, and the rage for it began in
England, Sir Henry Thompson, among others, commencing
to collect. The rivalry between Whistler and Rossetti lasted
1863] 117

for several years, until Rossetti, ill and broken, hardly saw
his friends, and until Mr. Marks, in the early 'seventies, bought
back from Whistler and Rossetti all he had sold them.

We cannot better finish the story of Whistler's relations
with the group at Tudor House than by giving the impression
left on one of them, whom Whistler always liked. Mr.
W. M. Rossetti, in November 1906, wrote specially for us
an account of his acquaintance with Whistler, and, though
it goes beyond this period, we quote it all here, as his estimate
of Whistler was formed during these early years.

" From this time [1862] onward, up to 1871 or 1872, we saw
Whistler continually, and on the most intimate footing. It may,
I dare say, have happened now and again that Dante Rossetti
saw him every day for a fortnight or so together — Whistler being
in his house, or he, rather seldomer, in Whistler's ; and the same
would be true of myself, but for the fact that I did not spend
the whole week, but only three days out of the seven, in the
Cheyne Walk house. Whistler was, as every one knows, a most
amusing talker and pleasant companion — full of good-humoured
and genial camaraderie ; and, so far as my brother and I are
concerned, he took everything as it came, and never exhibited
any short temper or readiness at taking offence. We knew,
through him, his brother, Dr. Whistler, and his mother, Alphonse
Legros, and perhaps some members of the Greek community in
London, such as the lonides family. There were various other
persons known to Whistler, whom we also knew independently
of him.

"It was through Whistler that my brother and I became
acquainted with Japanese woodcuts and colour-prints. This
may have been early in 1863. He had seen and purchased some
specimens of those works in Paris, and he heartily delighted in
them, and showed them to us ; and we then set about procuring
other works of the same class. I hardly know that any one in
London had paid any attention to Japanese designs prior to this.

" After leaving Queen's Road, Whistler was in three other

houses, all in the Chelsea district ; the last was the White House

in Tite Street. I knew him in all these residences ; but my

brother, I fancy, was not ever in the White House.

118 [1863

CHELSEA DAYS

" Thus things went on between us, always to our mutual
satisfaction, until the summer of 1872, when my brother had£a
severe illness, and then, up to the summer of 1874, he lived out
of London — first in Scotland, and afterwards at Kelmscott,
Oxfordshire. After returning to London, he saw, I think, very
little of Whistler ; the chief reason being that he had then adopted
a habit of not going about to see any one, and even in his own
house he kept very much to a restricted circle of intimate friends.
I never heard that any dissension had arisen between the two,
but they ceased to be in the way of meeting. I myself continued
seeing Whistler pretty frequently ; but, having married in 1874,
I was then much less among old bachelor friends than I had
previously been. He was occasionally in our house, and I in
his, up to the date, say 1879, when he left London after the Ruskin
libel action.

" After the trial in the Ruskin action had taken place, with its
very disputable verdict, Whistler lived abroad for a while. I
saw him, with the same cordiality as of old, once after he had
returned to London from Venice ; and this, it appears to me,
was the last time.

" Whistler is known to the world, by direct evidence and by
rumour, principally in three characters : (1) As a painter and
etcher, &c. ; (2) as a wit and humorist ; (3) as a man of a pug-
nacious or litigious turn. I will say a few words on each of
these three points, sufficient for expressing my own opinion,
which is all that I have to do with.

"(1) People have found out by this time, however their pre-
decessors may have doubted it, that Whistler was in many
respects a most admirable artist and master — an initiator and
leader, incomparable from his own point of view. That there
was a certain element of whimsicality in his art, as in his mind
and character generally, appears to be true. One is not bound
to assume that all his productions are blemishless, nor that a
portrait of a woman is most efficiently defined as ' an arrangement
in pearl and green.'

" (2) As a wit and humorist Whistler certainly excelled all
the other artists I have known, and, with an exception here and
there, all the men of whatsoever class. His wit and humour
consisted partly of general sprightliness, and partly of a natural
gift for epigram and repartee. All came with a spontaneous,
impromptu air. There are some people whom he scorned, and
1863]

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

to them he would say sharp things which they would not have
liked to hear ; but, broadly speaking, his sallies were not of an
ill-natured kind.

" (3) Whistler's pugnacious or litigious turn gave rise every
now and then to acts which I decidedly did not approve — neither
did my brother. I shall not enter into any details, for this is
not my affair. In general terms, it may be said that Whistler
in such matters had the feelings of an American or a Frenchman,
much rather than of an Englishman. He had a touchy sense
of self-regard, or indeed of self-assertion, and was not inclined
to yield an inch to any gainsayer. His Gentle Art of Making
Enemies gives a very speaking picture of his mind in this respect ;
and, after making all fair allowances contrariwise, I think it may
be truly said that, in the various controversies embalmed in this
diverting book, Whistler was essentially in the right in almost
every instance."

120 [1863

S o'

-4YH

C».

"•v,.

?L-.-S\: -\\.\IH,

Cv JosL' IIX 4- a

i.rxira Kali lioiu

ON POST IN CAMP

AN HOUR IN THE LIFE OF A CADET

CHAPTER XL CHELSEA DAYS. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN SIXTY-THREE TO
EIGHTEEN SIXTY-SIX CONTINUED

IN Whistler's correspondence with Fantin, which was
most active between 1860 and 1865, it can be seen
how completely he was outgrowing the influence of Courbet,
and how bitter he was in his reaction against Realism. In
his first revolt he went to the other extreme. He deliberately
built up subjects for himself that had nothing to do with life
as he knew it, and the motives for these he borrowed from
Japan.

It was in the studio at No. 7 Lindsey Row, no huge,
gorgeous, tapestry-hung, bric-d-brac crowded hall, but a
modest little second story, or English first floor, back room,
that the Japanese pictures were painted. The method was
still that of his earlier work, the paint thickly laid on, with
the richness he later sacrificed to other and more subtle
qualities. The difference was in his subjects. He did not
endeavour to conceal his " machinery." The Lange Leizen,
The Gold Screen, The Balcony, the Princesse du Pays de la
Porcelaine were so many excuses for him to render a beauty
foreign to Western life and English atmosphere. There was
no attempt at the learned accuracy of Tadema and Leighton
in their classical compositions, or of Holman Hunt in
his scriptural records. Whistler's models were frankly
not Japanese. The lady in the Lange Leizen — of the Six
Marks sits on a chair as she never would have sat in the
land from which her draperies came, and the pots and trays

1863] 121

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

and flowers around her are in a profusion unknown in the
houses of Tokio or Canton. In The Gold Screen, pose and
arrangement are equally inappropriate. The Princesse, in
her trailing robes, is as little Japanese or Chinese as she is
English. Once, when he left the studio and took his canvas
to the front of the house and painted The Balcony, though he
clothed the English models in Eastern dress and gave them
Eastern instruments to play, placed them before Japanese
screens and Anglo-Japanese railings, their background was
the Thames with the chimneys of Battersea. These things
did not matter to Whistler. It was not Japan he wanted to
paint, but the beautiful colour and form of Japanese detail,
as the titles he afterwards found for the pictures explain :
Purple and Rose, Caprice in Purple and Gold, Harmony in
Flesh Colour and Green, Rose and Silver. Harmony was
what he sought, though no Dutchman ever surpassed their
delicacy of detail, truth of texture, intricacy of pattern.
And yet we are always conscious in them of the artificial
structure as in none of his other work ; the models do not
live in their Japanese draperies ; Eastern lutes and hangings
are out of place on the mist-laden banks of the Thames ;
the device is too obvious.

The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine is the portrait of
Miss Christine Spartali, daughter of the Consul-General
for Greece in London, whom Whistler met at Mr. lonides*
house, and to whose dinners and parties he often went.
There were two daughters, Christine (afterwards the Countess
Edmond de Cahen) and Marie (Mrs. W. J. Stillman), both
very beautiful, with a beauty as foreign to England as the
colour of Japanese stuffs, and the conventions of Japanese
artists. Whistler, no less than Rossetti, was struck by their
beauty, and asked the younger sister, Christine, to sit to
him. Mrs. Stillman, who always accompanied her for the
sittings, has told us the story of the picture. The first
122 [1863

THE LANGE LEIZEN— OF THE SIX MAKKS
(Purple and Rose)

CHELSEA DAYS

day, when they arrived in the studio, Whistler had his
scheme prepared. The Japanese robe was ready, the rug
and screen were in place, and he gave the pose at once.
There are a number of small studies and sketches in oil and
pastel that show how he had perfected the idea beforehand.
They used to come to him twice a week, and this continued
through the winter of 1863-64. At first the work went
quickly, but soon it began to drag. Whistler often scraped
down the figure just as they thought it all but finished, and
day after day they returned to find that everything was to
be done over again. Their parents got tired of it in the end,
but not the two girls, who shared Whistler's enthusiasm.
Mrs. Stillman remembers that Whistler partly closed the
shutters so as to shut out the direct light ; that her sister
stood at one end of the room, the canvas beside her ; that
Whistler would look at the picture from a distance, then
suddenly dash at it, give one stroke, then dash away again.
She remembers too that, as a rule, they arrived about half-
past ten or a quarter to eleven, that he painted steadily, for-
getting everything else, that it was often long after two before
they lunched. When lunch at last was served, it was brought
into the studio, placed on a low table, and they sat on stools.
There were no such lunches anywhere else. Mrs. Whistler
provided American dishes, then strange in London ; among
other things raw tomatoes, a surprise to the two Greek girls,
who had never eaten tomatoes except overcooked, as the
Greeks like them, and canned apricots and cream, which
they had never eaten at all. One menu in particular Mrs.
Whistler often provided was roast pheasants, followed by
the inevitable tomato salad, and the apricots and cream,
usually with champagne. One cannot wonder that there
were occasional deficits in the bank account at Lindsey Row*
But it was not merely the things to eat and drink that made
the hour a delight. Whistler, silent when he worked, was

1 864] 123

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

gay at lunch. Perhaps better than his charm, Mrs. Stillman
remembers his devotion to his mother, who was calm and
dignified, with something of the sweet peacefulness of the
Friends. After lunch work was renewed, and it was four
and later before they were released.

The sittings went on until the sitter fell ill. Whistler was
pitiless with his models. The head in the Princesse gave him
most trouble. He kept Miss Spartali standing while he
worked on it, never letting her rest ; she must keep the entire
pose, and she would not admit her fatigue as long as she
could help it. During her illness, a model stood for the
gown, and when she was getting better, he came one day
and made a pencil-drawing of her head, though where it
went Mrs. Stillman never knew. There were a few more
sittings after this, and at last the picture was finished. The
two girls wanted their father to buy it, but Mr. Spartali
did not like it. He objected to it as a portrait of his
daughter. Appreciation of art was not among the virtues
of the London Greeks. Mr. Alexander lonides and his sons
were almost alone in preferring a good thing to a bad one.

Rossetti, always glad to be of service to a friend, sold the
picture for Whistler, though this was no easy matter.
Whistler agreed to take a hundred pounds, and Rossetti
placed the canvas in his own studio, where it would be seen
by a rich collector who was coming to look at his work.
The collector came, saw the Princesse, liked it, wanted it.
There was one objection : Whistler's signature in big letters
across the canvas. If Whistler would change the signature
he would take the picture. Rossetti, enchanted, hurried
to tell Whistler. But Whistler was indignant. The request
showed what manner of man such a patron was, one in whose
possession he did not care to have any work of his, and that
was the end of the bargain. However, Rossetti did sell the
Princesse to another collector, who died shortly afterwards,
124 [1864

CHELSEA DAYS

when it was bought by Frederick Leyland, and so led to the
decoration of the Peacock Room, one of Whistler's most
splendid works.

It is quite possible that the objection of Rossetti's collector
to the Princesse made Whistler realise the discordant effect
of a large signature on a picture. It is sure that, about this
time, he began to arrange his initials somewhat after the
Japanese fashion, and they first appear interlaced in an
oblong or circular frame exactly like the signatures of Japanese
artists on colour prints. He signed his name to the
earliest pictures, even to some of the Japanese. But with
the Nocturnes and the large portraits the Butterfly begins,
made from working the letters J. M. W. into a design, which
became more fantastic until it finally evolved into the
Butterfly in silhouette, and continued, in various forms.
In the Carlyle, the Butterfly appears in a round frame, like
a cut-out silhouette, behind the figure, and repeats the prints
on the wall. In the Miss Alexander it is in a large semicircle
and is far more distinctly a butterfly. In time, however, it
grew like a stencil, though in no sense was it one, as may
be seen in M. Duret's portrait, where the Butterfly is made
simply in silhouette, on the background, by a few touches
of the rose of the opera cloak and the fan. It was introduced
as a note of colour, as important in the picture as anything
else, and at times it was put in almost at the first painting
to judge the effect, scraped out with the whole thing, put
in again somewhere else, this repeated again and again until
he got it right. We have seen many an unfinished picture
with the most wonderfully finished Butterfly, because it
was just where Whistler wanted it.

The same development can be traced in his etchings, in
which it began to appear as a bit of decoration. He originally
signed the prints, and signed the plates with his name and
date bitten in. But later on the prints were signed with the

1864] 125

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Butterfly, followed by " imp " while the Butterfly alone was
etched on the copper or drawn on the stone. He began
to add the Butterfly to the signature to letters and to dedi-
cations on prints. Then the Butterfly found its way to his
invitation cards, and so it went on, until, at last, his corre-
spondence, public and private, was usually signed with the
Butterfly alone. This was elaborated in the most ingenious
manner in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, the Butterfly
not only decorating, but actually punctuating the pages.

On the frames of many of the early pictures, Japanese
patterns, which always haunted him, were painted in red
or blue on the flat gold, and a Butterfly placed on them,
always in relation to the picture. He designed the frames,
and they were carried out by the Greaves in the beginning,
while later, shortly before his death, a few were done by his
stepson, E. Godwin. The Sarasate, in Pittsburg, is an ex-
cellent example of one of these frames ; the Battersea Bridge,
at the Tate Gallery, is another. Whistler used a similar
scheme in framing his etchings, water-colours, and pastels,
reddish lines, and at times the Butterfly, appearing on the
white or gold of the frames. In after years, he not only
ceased almost entirely to use these painted frames, but he
designed a simple gold frame, with parallel reeded lines on
the outer edge, for the paintings, now universally known as
" the Whistler frame." For his etchings and lithographs
also, he gave up the decoration and employed a plain white
frame in two planes. His canvases and his panels were
always of the same sizes ; consequently they always fitted
his frames. And in his studio, as in few, if any, others,
frequently there might be half a hundred canvases with
their faces to the wall, and only half a dozen frames. But
they all fitted, and Whistler never showed a picture un-
framed. All this was the outcome of the Japanese influence,
and of his knowledge of the way the Japanese display their
126 [1864

CHELSEA DAYS

art. His deference to Japanese convention went so far that
he often put a branch of a tree or a reed into the foreground
of his seas and rivers as decoration, with no reference to the
picture, sometimes the only Japanese suggestion in the design.
The Lange Leizen — of the Six Marks went to the Academy
of 1864, and so did the Wapping. The Japanese subject
seemed " quaint " to the critic of the Athenceum, and the
drawing " preposterously incorrect," but he could not deny
the " superb colouring," the " beautiful harmonies " ; while
in Wapping he saw an " incomparable view of the Lower
Pool of London." " Never before was that familiar scene
so triumphantly well painted," Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote,
and he considered Whistler's

" on the whole, the most thoroughly satisfying works in the
Academic gallery to the artistic sense. His is the art of con-
cealing art, yet always with so fine an originality that to the
perceptive eye the art is the one main and supreme constituent
of the whole, the sum of its total result. He realises, through
Nature for the sake of art, an aim as legitimate as the more
usual one of realising through art for the sake of Nature, and even
more intrinsically pictorial."

He was now working out of the frankly artificial scheme
of the Japanese pictures to a phase in which he was more
himself than he had ever been before. A year after the
exhibition of the Lange Leizen, he sent to the Academy of
1865 the most individual, the most complete, the most
perfect picture he ever painted at any period : The Little
White Girl, which artists, with reason, rank as one of the
few great pictures of the world. It was dated 1864 originally
and there are reproductions showing the date. But about
1900 he painted it out. He had been working on the picture
he told us, and " did not see the use of those great figures
sprawling there." " Joe " was the model. Now, there
was no masquerading in foreign finery. Whistler painted
her, as he must often have seen her, in her si,mple white
1865] 127

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

gown, leaning against the mantel, her beautiful face reflected
in the mirror. The room was not littered purposely with
his purchases from the little shops in the Strand and the
Rue de Rivoli. Japan is in the detail of blue and white on
the mantel ; the girl holds a Japanese fan ; a spray of azalea
trails across her dress. But these were part of Whistler's
house, part of the reality he had created for himself, and he
made them no more beautiful than the mantel, the grate of
the English house, than the reflection in the mirror. There
was no building up, he painted what he saw. The things
actually near and around him were lovelier than any studio
arrangement. And there was in the method the beginning
of change. The paint is thinner on the canvas, the brush
flows more freely. Method and design alike give the repose
of the perfect work. The Little White Girl is now owned by
Mr. Arthur Studd.

The picture had not gone to the Academy when Swinburne
saw it, and wrote Before the Mirror : Verses under a Picture.
The poem is said to have been printed on gold paper,
fastened somehow to the frame, which has disappeared,
and two verses were inserted in the catalogue as sub-title.
These must have been the lines Whistler thought best
interpreted the beauty he meant to express :

Come snow, come wind or thunder,

High up in air,
I watch my face, and wonder

At my bright hair ;
Naught else exalts or grieves
The rose at heart, that heaves

With love of her own leaves and lips that pair.

I cannot see what pleasures

Or what pains were ;
What pale new loves and treasures

New years will bear ;
What beam will fall, what shower,
What grief or joy for dower ;

But one thing knows the flower — the flower is fair.
128 [1865

CHELSEA DAYS

Other lines show as well how sympathetically Swinburne
felt the beauty of the picture :

White rose in red rose-garden
Is not so white ; —

and again in the verse where he calls The Little White Girl
" White sister " :

My hand, a fallen rose,

Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care.

Swinburne's poem could not make The Little White Girl
at the Academy better understood than The White Girl had
been in Berners Street. The rare few could appreciate its
" charm " and " exquisiteness " with Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
who found that it was " crucially tested by its proximity
to the flashing white in Mr. Millais' Esther," but that it stood
the test, " retorting delicious harmony for daring force, and
would shame any other contrast." But the more general
opinion was all the other way. The Athenceum distinguished
itself by regretting this year that Whistler should make
the " most ' bizarre ' of bipeds " out of the women he painted.
There was praise for two of his other three pictures. " Subtle
beauty of colour " and " almost mystical delicacy of tone "
were discovered in The Gold Screen, and " colour such as
painters love " in the Old Batter sea Bridge, afterwards Brown
and Silver. This is the beautiful grey Battersea, with
the touch of red in the roofs of the opposite shore, the link
between the early paintings on the river and the Nocturnes
that were to follow. The Scarf, a picture we do not recognise,
attracted less attention, and Whistler, who, only the year
before, had been declared " one of the most original artists
of the day," was now dismissed as one who " might be
called half a great artist." But stranger than this was
the change in the attitude of the French critics, which we
cannot account for. In 1863, they overwhelmed him with
praise. Two years later, they had hardly a good word to
1865] i : i 129

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

say for him. LeVi Lagrange, now forgotten as he merits,
wrote the criticism of the Royal Academy of 1865 for the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and all he could see in The Little
White Girl was a weak repetition of The White Girl, a weari-
some variation of the theme of white ; really, he said, it
was quite witty — fort spirituel — of the Academicians, who
could have refused this and the two Japanese pictures, to
give them good places, and so deliver them over to judgment.
And then he praised Horseley and Prinsep, Leslie and Land-
seer. The Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, exhibited in
the Salon, made no more favourable impression. It seemed
nothing but a study of costume to Paul Mantz, who, in the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, decided to forget it and remember
merely the mysterious seduction of The White Girl of two
years before. Its eccentricity was only possible if taken
in small doses like the homoeopathist's pills, according to
Jules Claretie, who in the same article, in IS Artiste, laughed
at Manet's Olympia as a jest, a parody. More than twenty
years were to pass before, in Paris, praise of Whistler came
into vogue again.

Whistler's only other appearance at the Salon this
year was in Fantin's Hommage a la Verite, one of the
two large groups including Whistler's portrait which Fantin
painted. The other, done the year before, was the
Hommage a Delacroix, who had died in 1863. Whistler
was among the several admirers whom Fantin repre-
sented, gathered round the portrait of the dead master.
Whistler wanted Fantin to find a place for Rossetti, and
Fantin was willing, but Rossetti could not manage to get
to Paris, or to stay there, for the necessary sittings, and
unfortunately for him he was left out of one of the most
celebrated portrait groups of modern times, now in the
Moreau-Nelaton Collection in the Louvre. The distinguished
artists and men of letters in the group were there nominally
130 [1865

CHELSEA DAYS

out of respect to the memory of Delacroix, but really to
enable Fantin to justify his belief in the beauty of life as it
is, and his protest against the classical dictionary and studio
properties. Most of the men in the group were, or have
since become, famous : Whistler, Manet, Legros, Bracque-
mond, Fantin, Baudelaire, Duranty, Champfleury, Cordier,
De Balleroy. Fantin painted them in the costume of the
moment, as Rembrandt and Hals and Van der Heist, from
whom he is said to have got the idea, painted the regents
and archers of seventeenth-century Holland. Fantin's
white shirt is the one concession to picturesqueness, and the
one relief to the severity of detail are the flowers on the
table in front of Whistler, a lithe, erect, youthful figure,
with fine keen face and abundant hair. That the young
American should be the centre of the group was a distinction
he could better appreciate than any one. When Rossetti
saw the picture, he wrote to his brother that it had " a
great deal of very able painting in parts, but it is a great
slovenly scrawl after all, like the rest of this incredible new
school." The picture was shown in the Salon of 1864,
followed in 1865 by the Hommage a la Veriti, — le Toast.

In this, Fantin strayed so far from the Real as to introduce
an allegorical figure of Truth, and to allow Whistler to array
himself in a gorgeous Chinese robe. " Pense a la robe,
superbe a faire, et donne la moi ! " Whistler urged from
London, and Fantin yielded. " Je Vai encore revu dans
V atelier en 1865, il me posa dans un tableau aujourd'hui detruit
' Le Toast? ou il etait costume d'une robe Japonaise," is Fantin's
story of it in the notes which we have already quoted, but
Whistler, writing at the time, speaks of the costume as
Chinese. He brought it over to Paris for the sittings.
Fantin was quick to regret his concessions. An allegorical
figure could not be made real, the whole thing was absurd.
When he got the canvas back, he destroyed it,, all but the

1865] 131

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

portraits of Whistler, Vollon and himself. Whistler's is now
in the New York Public Library, the gift of Mr. Avery.

In the spring of 1865 Whistler was joined in London by
his younger brother. Dr. Whistler had distinguished himself
in the Confederate Army as surgeon, and by his bravery in
the field. He had served in the Richmond Hospitals and in
Libby Prison ; he had been assistant-surgeon at Drewry's
Bluff, and, in 1864, when Grant made his movement against
Richmond, he had been assigned to Orr's Rifles, a celebrated
South Carolina regiment. In the early winter of 1865, a
few months' furlough was given him, and he was entrusted
by the Government in Richmond with important despatches
for Liverpool. Sherman's advance prevented his running
the blockade from Charleston, nor was there any passing
through the lines from Wilmington by sea. He was obliged
to go north through Maryland, which meant making his way
round Grant's lines. The difficulties and dangers were end-
less. He had to get rid of his Confederate uniform, and in
the state of Confederate finance, the most modest suit of
clothes cost fourteen hundred dollars ; for a seat in an am-
bulance or waggon he had to pay five hundred. The trains
were crowded by officials and soldiers, and he could get a
ride in them only by stealth. The roads were abominable,
for driving, or riding, or walking. Often he was alone, and his
one companion, toward the last, was more of a hindrance
than a help. This was a fellow soldier who had lost a leg
at Antietam, and was now trying to get to Philadelphia for
repairs to an artificial leg, manufactured there and grown
rusty. Stanton's expedition filled the country near the
Rappahannock with snares and pitfalls ; to cross Chesa-
peake Bay was to take one's life in one's hands ; and north
of the Bay were the enrolling officers of the Union, in search
of conscripts. However, Philadelphia was at last reached,
and a ticket for New York bought at the railroad depdt,
132 [1865

CHELSEA DAYS

where two sentries, with bayonets fixed, guarded the ticket-
office, and might, for all Dr. Whistler knew, have seen him
in Libby Prison. This, he said, was the worst moment of
all. In New York he took passage on the City of Manchester
and from Liverpool he hurried to London. One week later
came the news of the fall of Richmond and the Confederacy.
The furlough was over. There was no going back. It was
probably about this time, from the costume and the technical
resemblance to Mr. Luke lonides' portrait that Whistler
painted a very interesting head of Dr. Whistler — Portrait
of My Brother — owned by Mrs. Dr. Whistler. It is carried
out in the same solid fashion that characterises the other
portraits of the period.

With the end of the war, many other Southern men who
could not return home drifted into London and to the house
in Lindsey Row. Adventure was in the air, was before
long to send Whistler in search of it himself.

Early in September of 1865, Whistler's mother was suffer-
ing from serious trouble with her eyes, and went with her
two sons to Coblentz, to be under the care of a celebrated
oculist. This gave Whistler an opportunity to go again
over the ground of the Rhine journey. After that, he spent
some time at Trouville, where he was joined by Courbet,
who had come for his first look at the sea and was so impressed
that he stayed on. Whistler's work shows how far he had
drifted away from Courbet, though the two were always the
best of friends. But Whistler had ceased to be the pupil.
He had studied, and experimented, and solved problems
for himself, since Courbet praised his Piano Picture, since
he painted his Coast of Brittany with its Courbet-like rocks
along the shore, and his Blue Wave breaking with Courbet-
like force on the sands at Biarritz. In Sea and Rain, done
then at Trouville, there is not a suggestion of Courbet. But
we have seen seas by Courbet, owned by M. Duret, that

1865] 133

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Whistler might have signed. " Joe " was there, too, and
Courbet found time to paint her with her " copper-coloured
hair." Whistler lingered late on the French coast. The
sea-pieces he had begun, including Courbet on the Shore, now
owned by Mrs. J. C. Gardner, promised great things, and
as the autumn went on, the place was more quiet for work,
and the seas and skies more wonderful. He did not get
back to London until November. A few months later, early
in 1866, he sailed for Valparaiso.

This journey to Valparaiso is the most unaccountable
adventure in his sometimes unaccountable career. Various
reasons for it have been given : health, a quarrel, restlessness,
a whim. But we tell the story as he told it to us :

" It was a moment when many of the adventurers the war
had made of many Southerners, were knocking about London,
hunting for something to do, and, I hardly knew how, but the
something resolved itself into an expedition to go and help the
Chilians and, I cannot say why, the Peruvians too. Anyhow,
there were South Americans to be helped against the Spaniards.
Some of these people came to me, as a West Point man, and
asked me to join — and it was all done in an afternoon. I was
off at once in a steamer from Southampton to Panama. We
crossed the Isthmus, and it was all very awful — earthquakes
and things — and I vowed, once I got home, that nothing would
ever bring me back again.

" I found myself in Valparaiso, and in Santiago, and I called
on the President, or whoever the person then in authority was.
After that came the bombardment. There was the beautiful
bay with its curving shores, the town of Valparaiso on one side,
on the other, the long line of hills. And there, just at the en-
trance of the bay, was the Spanish fleet, and, in between, the
English fleet, and the French fleet, and the American fleet, and
the Russian fleet, and all the other fleets. And when the morning
came, with great circles and sweeps, one after another sailed out
into the open sea, until the Spanish fleet alone remained. It
drew up right in front of the town, and bang went a shell, and
the bombardment began. The Chilians didn't pretend to defend
themselves. The people all got out of the way, and I and the
134 [1866

VALPARAISO

< X,,ct,<n,<', Him- and f.Wrfj (Stn.lyf,,,- th,- la,W picture)

'•I

STUDY OF BATTKRSEA RRTDGK

( Chalk Drcm-ing)

CHELSEA DAYS

officials rode to the opposite hills, where we could look on. The
Spaniards conducted the performance in the most gentlemanly
fashion ; they just set fire to a few of the houses, and once, with
some sense of fun, sent a shell whizzing over toward our hills.
And then I knew what a panic was. I and the officials turned
and rode as hard as we could, anyhow, anywhere. The riding
was splendid, and I, as a West Point man, was head of the pro-
cession. By noon, the performance was over. The Spanish
fleet sailed again into position, the other fleets sailed in, sailors
landed to help put out the fires, and I and the officials rode back
into Valparaiso. All the little girls of the town had turned out,
waiting for us, and as we rode in called us ' Cowards ! ' The
Henriquetta, the ship fitted up in London, did not appear till
long after, and then we breakfasted, and that was the end of it."

Mr. Theodore Roussel says Whistler once told him that,
on another occasion, he got on one of the defending gunboats
and had his baptism of fire amid a rain of shot and shell, a
fact which, fine as it is, he omitted from his story to us.

He made good use of his time in Valparaiso, and
painted the three pictures of the harbour which are known
and two others which have disappeared. These he gave to
the steward, or the purser of the ship, to bring home, and
the purser kept them. Once they were seen in his rooms, or
house, in London by some one who recognised Whistler's
work. " Why, they must be by Whistler ! " he said. " Who's
Whistler ? " asked the purser. " An artist," said the other.
" Oh, no," said the purser, " they were painted by a gentle-
man." The purser started back for South America, and
took them with him. " And then a tidal wave met the
ship and swept off the purser, the cabin and the Whistlers."

The voyage back was vaguer than the voyage out. From
this vagueness looms one figure : the Marquis de Marmalade,
a black man from Hayti, who made himself obnoxious to
Whistler, apparently by his colour and his swagger. One
day Whistler kicked him across the deck to the top of the
companion way, and there sat a lady who proved an obstacle
1866] 135

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

for the moment. But Whistler just picked up the Marquis
de Marmalade, dropped him on the step below her, and
finished kicking him downstairs. After that, Whistler
spent the rest of the journey, not exactly in irons, but chiefly
in his cabin.

The final adventure of the journey was in London. Whistler
never told us, but everybody else says that when he got out
of the train at Euston, or Waterloo, some one, besides his
friends was waiting : whether the captain of the ship, or
relations of the Marquis de Marmalade, or an old enemy,
really makes little difference. Somebody got a thrashing,
and this was the end to the most extraordinary and un-
accountable episode in Whistler's life.

136 [1866

1'OHTKAIT OK WHISTLER

(('hull; Drinciny)

CHAPTER XII. CHELSEA DAYS CON-
TINUED. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX TO
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-
TWO.

IT was late in 1866 when Whistler returned from Valparaiso.
Soon after, he moved into No. 2, at the east end of
Lindsey Row, now No. 96 Cheyne Walk. It was a three-
story house with an attic, part of the old palace remodelled,
and, like No. 7, it looked on the river, only a few yards away.
Here he lived longer than anywhere else, here he painted
the Nocturnes and the great portraits, here he gave his
Sunday breakfasts. He had a friendly house-warming on
February 5 (1867), when the two Rossettis dined with him,
and Mr. W. M. Rossetti wrote in his diary :

" There are some fine old fixtures, such as doors, fireplaces,
and Whistler has got up the rooms with many delightful Japanes-
isms. Saw for the first time his pagoda cabinet. He has two
or three sea-pieces new to me : one, on which he particularly
lays stress, larger than the others, a very grey unbroken sea
[probably Sea and Rain], also a clever vivacious portrait of
himself begun."

No doubt, this is the portrait in round hat, paint-brushes
in his hand, owned by the late Mr. George McCullough, the
first oil in which the white lock appears.

Mr. Greaves says that the dining-room at No. 2 was blue,
with a darker blue dado and doors, and purple Japanese
fans tacked on the walls and ceiling ; other friends remember
" a fluttering of purple fans " : the fans " broidered " at the
1867] 137

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

foot of Fusiyama, to him as beautiful as the marbles of the
Parthenon. One evening when Miss Chapman was dining
there, and Whistler wanted her to see the view up the river
from the other end of the bridge as he was painting it, he
told her, if she would come out with him, he would show her
something " as lovely as a fan ! " The studio, again the
second-story back room, was grey, with black dado and doors ;
from the Mother and the Carlyle, one knows that there were
Japanese hangings and prints on the walls ; and in it was
the big screen, which he painted for Leyland but always
kept for himself, with Battersea Bridge running across the
top, Chelsea Church beyond, and a great gold moon in the
blue sky. The stairs were covered with Dutch metal. He
slept in a huge Chinese bed. Beautiful silver was on his
table. He ate off blue and white. " Suppose one of these
plates was smashed ? " Miss Chapman asked Whistler once.
" Why, then — you know," he said, " we might as well all
take hands and go throw ourselves into the Thames ! "

The beauty of the decoration, as at No. 7, was its sim-
plicity, an innovation when men were wavering between the
riot of Victorian vulgarity and the overpowering opulence
of Morris medisevalism. From descriptions, Rossetti's house
was a museum, an antiquity shop, in comparison. The
simplicity seemed the more bewildering because it was the
growth, not of weeks, but of years. The drawing-room was
not painted until the day of Whistler's first dinner-party.
In the morning he sent for his pupils, the brothers Greaves,
to help him. " It will never be dry in time ! " they feared.
" What matter ? " said Whistler, " it will be beautiful ! "
" We three worked like mad," is Mr. Walter Greaves' account,
and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour, pale
yellow and white spread over doors and woodwork, the
tapestries were in place, and, we have heard, gowns and
coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before
138 [1867

•

STUDIES IN BLACK AND WHITE CHALK

(For the Six I'rojeclt)

CHELSEA DAYS

the evening was at an end. One Sunday morning, Whistler,
hurrying home after he had taken his mother to Chelsea
Church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils, and painted
a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels
at the end of the hall. His mother was not so pleased when,
on her return, she saw the blue and white harmony, for she
would have had him put away his brushes on Sunday as once
she had put away his toys. But she had many other trials
and revelations : coming into the studio one day, she found
the parlour-maid posing for " the allover ! " The ships were
in place long before the dado of hall and stairway was covered
with gold, and sprinkled with rose and white chrysanthemum
petals. Miss Alexander (Mrs. Spring-Rice) saw Whistler
at work upon it when she came to sit, and he had lived six
years at No. 2. Not one of Whistler's houses was ever
completely decorated and furnished ; they had a look as if
he had just moved in, or was just moving out ; often there
were packing-cases and trunks about, but as much as was
finished was always beautiful.

Whistler was represented at all the important exhibitions
of 1867, in London and Paris. He began the year by sending
to the French Gallery, in January, one of the pictures painted
in Valparaiso : Crepuscule in Flesh Colour and Green it is
now called, the property of Mr. Graham Robertson. It is
the long picture of Valparaiso Harbour in the early evening,
ships moored with partly furled sails ; the first painting of
twilight, and one of the first paintings carried out in the
liquid manner of the later Nocturnes. In this there is a
great advance : it is the first of the Nocturnes. There were
critics then to call it a " poem in colour," though Whistler had
not yet taught them to look for the " painter's poetry " in
his work. The upright Valparaiso, a perfect Nocturne, was
done at the same time, 1866, but not exhibited until after-
wards. It was owned by Mr. George McCullough, and
1867] 139

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

another unfinished version of the same subject, belonged to
Mr. T. R. Way.

In the Salon of 1867, where it had been rejected eight
years before, At the Piano was accepted, and also The Thames
in Ice — Sur la Tamise : VHiver. It was the year of the
French International Exhibition. Whistler was not invited
to exhibit in the British section. Mr. W. M. Rossetti notes
in his diary :

"March 29 (1867).— .... Whistler looked in. He says
that he never from first to last received any invitation to con-
tribute to the British section of the Paris Exhibition. This
might seem invidious, but the result is that he gets in the American
section much more space than could have been allotted him
in the British."

Whistler's name was hardly known in America, and M.
Duret writes that, probably, Mr. George Lucas spoke of
Whistler to Mr. Avery, the Art Commissioner for the United
States at the Exhibition. The result was that a number of
his etchings and four pictures were hung : The White Girl,
Wapping or On the Thames, Old Battersea Bridge, Twilight
on the Ocean, the title then of the Graham Robertson Val-
paraiso. The Hudson River school dominated American art,
and Whistler's paintings had to compete with the big machines
of Church and Bierstadt. Tuckerman, in his Book of the
Artists, quotes an unnamed American critic who, in 1867,
found that Whistler's etchings differed from his paintings
in meriting the attention they attracted, for he could see
in the Marines only " blurred, foggy imperfections," and
in The White Girl only

" a powerful female with red hair, and a vacant stare in her
soulless eyes. She is standing on a wolf -skin hearth-rug, for what
reason is unrecorded. The picture evidently means vastly
more than it expresses — albeit expressing too much. Notwith-
standing an obvious want of purpose, there is some boldness in
140 [1867

SEA-BKACH AND FIGUKES
(Pastel)

(Study for the Six Project*)

STUDY OF A NUDE

(Chalk Drawing)
(Studies for the Six Projects)

CHELSEA DAYS

the handling, and singularity in the glare of the colours which
cannot fail to divert the eye and weary it."

The Americans were not treated with much respect by
the Hanging Committee. Their work was put in corridors
and dark corners, and Whistler undoubtedly suffered from
the hanging. But this does not account for the fact that the
French critics, enthusiastic four years before, were now hardly
more appreciative than the American. Paul Mantz no
longer saw poetry in this " strange white apparition " ; he
was distressed by the head, which had always been to him of
insupportable ugliness ; and, consistent in his inconsistency,
he pointed to the charming and rare relations in dress and
rug, though, when the picture was at the Salon des Refuses,
the rug had created discord for him. Burty now thought that
the prints shared the fate of the paintings, that either time
had not been favourable to them, exaggerating their defects,
or else critical eyes had lost their indulgence. The etch-
ings were photographic, and had a dryness and minuteness,
due, no doubt, to the early training of " Mr. Whystler."
Both these men were writing in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts.

Whistler was, nevertheless, satisfied with his success, and
to enjoy it he and his brother, Dr. Whistler, went to Paris
early in April. The enjoyment was interrupted by an event
of which we should say nothing, had not too much been already
said for it to be ignored. It ought never to have been made
public, but then Whistler's affairs always were made public,
through no fault of his. The incident is to his honour,
showing that he was generous and staunch to his friends.

In Paris, the brothers heard of the death of Mr. Traer,
Seymour Haden's assistant, a member of the British Jury,
on which Haden also served. Traer was always liked by
Whistler, to whom he sat for one of the group in the etching
of The Music Room, and one of the figures in the dry-point
Encamping. Circumstances in connection with Traer's
1867] I4I

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

death and burial led to a misunderstanding between the
two brothers and the brother-in-law. Seymour Haden
was in Paris and the three met. The dispute was short
and sharp, and the result was a summons for the two
brothers to appear before a juge de paix. Whistler had
appeared in the same court only a few days earlier. A
workman had dropped plaster on him as he passed through
a narrow street in the Latin Quarter, and he had met the
offence in the one way possible, according to his code.
Whistler had then sent for the American Minister, and the
magistrate had apologised. But when he appeared this
time, " Connu ! " said the juge de paix and there was no
apology, but a fine. Haden said he fell through a plate-glass
window, Whistler that he knocked him through. Haden
maintained that both brothers were against him, Whistler
that he demolished Haden single-handed.

It happened just when London gossip got hold of the
story of the Marquis de Marmalade and Whistler's arrival
in London from Valparaiso. Dr. Moncure Conway, in his
Reminiscences, recalls a dinner given by Dante Rossetti to
W. J. Stillman, in the winter of 1867, when

" Whistler (a Confederate) related with satisfaction his fisticuff
with a Yankee [really the black Marquis] on ship-board, William
Bossetti remarked : ' I must say, Whistler, that your conduct
was scandalous.' (Stillman and myself were silent.) Dante
Gabriel promptly wrote :

' There's a combative Artist named Whistler
Who is, like his own hog-hairs, a bristler :

A tube of white lead

And a punch on the head
Offer varied attractions to Whistler.' "

It was at this time, too, that Whistler had a difference
with Legros, to which no reference would be made had it
not also become a legend. Friends tried to reconcile them,
and only succeeded in spreading the report of the difference.
142 [1867

w £

H

CHELSEA DAYS

It is in these matters one regrets that Whistler did not tell
his own story. The rumours spread, and, within a month
or two, Whistler began to be talked of as quarrelsome : there
had been no such talk before the journey to South America.
Then Haden, back in London, resigned his post as honorary
surgeon to South Kensington Museum, printed a pamphlet to
explain, and threatened to resign from the Burlington Fine
Arts Club, of which both he and Whistler were members,
unless Whistler was expelled. Mr. W. M. Rossetti's diary
furnishes these details :

"June 13, 1867. — Whistler . . . has been written to by the
Burlington Club, if he does not resign on account of the Haden
row, they would have to consider his expulsion . . . Gabriel
and I agree in considering this very improper, as it amounts to
condemning one member unheard on the ipse dixit of the other.
. . . December 13, 1867. — Whistler's expulsion was voted by eighteen
against eight. . . I handed in my resignation to Wornum."

Two or three days later, December 17 :

" Gabriel has now sent in his resignation to the Burlington Club."
To us Mr. W. M. Rossetti writes :

" When a motion was brought on for expelling him from the
Burlington Fine Arts Club, I moved a counter-resolution, and,
on the motion for expulsion being carried, I resigned my member-
ship of the club. My opinion in that matter was not that Whistler
had been blameless in the conduct which led to the motion for
expulsion, but that the club had no claim to interfere in an affair
which had not occurred in the club premises, nor even in the
United Kingdom."

Whistler's manner of resenting injury had a great deal to
do with his future, and with the way he was treated in
England. People who did not know him became afraid of
him, and this fear grew, and was the reason of the reputation
that clung to him for years, and that clings to his memory.

Before Whistler's pictures went to the Royal Academy,
Mr. W. M. Rossetti saw them :
1867] 143

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

" March 31 (1867).— To see Whistler's pictures for the R.A.
To the R.A. he means to send Symphony in White, No. III.
(heretofore named The Two Little White Girls), and a Thames
picture ; possibly also one of the four sea pictures ; and I rather
recommended him to select the largest of these, which he regards
with predilection, of a grey sea and a very grey sky."

Battersea, the grey river with barges going up with the
tide, was the Thames picture decided upon ; Sea and Rain,
painted when Whistler and Courbet worked together at
Trouville, was the sea picture ; and The Two Little White
Girls, at present in Mr. Davis' collection, was sent under
its new name, Symphony in White, No. III. ; the first time
one of his pictures was catalogued as a Symphony, his first
use of a title borrowed from musical terms to explain his
pictorial intentions.

Baudelaire had already given him the hint, and
Gautier had already written symphonies in verse. One
of Murger's Bohemians had already composed a Symphonic
sur V influence du bleu dans les arts. In 1863 Paul Mantz
had described The White Girl as a " Symphony in White."
There can be no doubt that from these things Whistler got
the name that in the Academy passed for a deliberate
affectation, an insult to the people's intelligence. The
picture in itself might not have offended. It was his third
variation of his study of white upon white. Some of the
detail of The Little White Girl was repeated. The only
difference was that now there were two figures instead of
one, and that the change of his technique, from the use of
thick to thin flowing paint, was more apparent than ever.
The offence was in the title. The critic of the Athenceum
had the sense to thank the " painter who endeavours by any
means to show people what he really aims at." But he was
almost alone. Burty, in noticing the Academy of 1867 for
the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, thought the Academy's hanging
144 [1867

DESIGN FOR A FAX

( It'ater-culoiir}

TIM.IK : A MODKL

(Dry-point)
(Sf uilies for the Si.r Projects)

CHELSEA DAYS

Whistler at all a fine piece of irony, and took the occasion
to regret the painter's failure to fulfil his early promise, a
regret the British critics repeated until the end of the artist's
life.

Hamerton, in the Saturday Review, June 1, 1867, repre-
sented still better the general feeling of the insulted, solemn,
bewildered ones :

" There are many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not
precisely a symphony in white. One lady has a yellowish dress
and brown hair and a bit of blue ribbon ; the other has
a red fan, and there are flowers and green leaves. There is a
girl in white on a white sofa, but even this girl has reddish hair ;
and of course there is the flesh-colour of the complexions."

Whistler answered in a letter, first published, however,
in the Art Journal for April 1887, and afterwards in the
Gentle Art of Making Enemies :

" Bon Dieu ! did this wise person expect white hair and
chalked faces ? And does he then, in his astounding consequence,
believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but shall
be a continued repetition of F F F ? . . . Fool ! "

Whistler believed that to carry on tradition was the
artist's business. Rembrandt, Velasquez, Claude, Canaletto,
Guardi, Hogarth, Courbet, the Japanese, in turn influenced
him. Some see, at this period, the influence of Albert Moore,
which, if it existed at all, was as ephemeral and superficial
as Rossetti's. It could be argued with more truth that
Whistler influenced Albert Moore, who, for at least two
pictures, Harmony of Orange and Pale Yellow, Variation of
Blue and Gold, borrowed Whistler's titles. Whistler also
believed that the study of the masters could have no other
end than to evolve something entirely personal, and, in the
endeavour to develop his personality, he was passing through
a moment of experiments, difficulties and discouragements.
1867] i : K 145

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

All this we find in his letters to Fantin, to whom he explained
the study of white upon white, elaborated in his three
Symphonies in White. A fourth was started : some say
the Three Figures intended for Leyland. In the Two Girls,
he wrote to Fantin, the harmony was repeated in line as in
colour, and he sent a sketch of it. Alternately he exulted
in the rhythm of the lines, and despaired because he could
not give this rhythm as he would. The picture was scraped
down and repainted, and with each fresh difficulty he de-
plored the mistakes of his early training. Mr. Eddy says
that Whistler used to call Ingres the " bourgeois Greek."
This we never heard him say, nor is there any such want of
respect in his letters to Fantin, for there he expresses regret
that he did not study under Ingres, whose work he may
have liked moderately, but from whom he would have
learned to draw : which was an absurd piece of modesty for
he drew better than Ingres, as his etchings prove. He never
execrated Courbet, nor denounced ce damne Realisme, so
violently as in the autumn of 1867, and it was not quite
fair, for Realism had brought Courbet to the conclusions
which Whistler, unaided, was now reaching : that study of
art, ancient and modern, familiarity with tradition, has no
other object than the development of one's own individuality,
and that the artist is to go to Nature for inspiration, but to
take from it only its life and its beauty. Whistler, in his
impatience, recalled Realism as practised by the young
enthusiasts gathered about Courbet, and denied vigorously
that Courbet could have influenced him. " Ca ne pouvait
pas etre autrement, parce que je suis ires personnel, et que fai
ete riche en qualitis qu'il rfavait pas et qui me suffisaient."
The cry of " Nature " had appealed to his vanity as painter,
Whistler said, and he had mocked at tradition, and in his
early pictures had copied Nature with the self-confidence of
" Vecolier debauche." He chafed over the time he had lost
146 [1867

STUDIES FOR THE SIX PROJECTS

SYMPHONY IX WHITE, NO. III.

CHELSEA DAYS

before discovering for himself that art is not the exact
reproduction of Nature, but its interpretation, and that the
artist must seek his motives in Nature, and then weave
from them a beautiful pattern on his canvas. Pattern,
harmony, repetition are words ever recurring in his letters,
as the same tone or colour recurs in his design, and was
compared by him to the thread of silk running through
a piece of embroidery. He was loud in praise of Fantin's
flowers, because he saw in them this repetition, this pattern.
Passages in some of the letters might have come out of the
Ten o'Clock. His definition of the relation of drawing to
colour — " son amant, mais aussi son maitre " — seems the
germ of the idea, there worked out, of the artist as the son
and the master of Nature ; " her son in that he loves her,
her master in that he knows her." Whistler had a way of
using the same idea over and over again, in his talk, in his
letters, in his pamphlets, perfecting it with use, so that often
it is impossible to say where a certain expression, phrase
or doctrine originated.

It was not only the change in his attitude toward Nature
that was preoccupying him. He was perfecting the tech-
nical method of which the beginnings are seen in the Sym-
phonies in White, No. II. and No. III., and which was brought
to perfection in the Nocturnes. Altogether, the period was
one of transition, with its attendant hopes and fears. Those
who saw him intimately know how hard he worked, and
how endlessly he was discouraged. For a while he lived
with Mr. Frederick Jameson, the architect. He never
spoke to us of this interval away from Lindsey Row, and
Mr. Jameson is certain only that it was about 1868 or 1869.
Most likely it was in the winter of 1867-68, when Mrs.
Whistler went home to visit her family and friends, whom
the war had left poor and broken. Mr. Jameson was settled
atjfNo. 62 Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, in rooms that
1868] *47

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

had first been Burne-Jones', and then Poynter's. He
writes us :

" The seven months Whistler and I lived there together were
unproductive and uneventful. He was working at some Japanese
pictures, one of which, quite unfinished, was hung at the late
exhibition of his pictures. I have seen that one — at least large
portions of it — apparently completely finished, but they never
satisfied him, and were shaved down to the bed-rock mercilessly.
The man, as I knew him, was so different from the descriptions
and presentations I have read of him, that I would like to speak
of the other side to his character. It is impossible to conceive
of a more unfailingly courteous, considerate and delightful
companion than Whistler, as I found him. We lived in great
intimacy, and the studio was always open to me, whatever he
was doing. We had all our meals together, except when else-
where engaged, and I never heard a complaint of anything in
our simple household arrangements from him. Any little failure
was treated as a joke. His courtesy to servants and models
was particularly charming, indeed, I can't conceive of his quarrel-
ling with any one without real provocation. His talk about his
own work revealed a very different man to me from the self-
satisfied man he is usually believed to have been. He knew his
powers, of course, but he was painfully aware of his defects —
in drawing, for instance. I can remember with verbal accuracy
some very striking talks we had on the subject. To my judg-
ment, he was the most absolutely truthful man about himself
that I ever met. I never knew him to hide an opinion or a
thought — nor to try to excuse an action."

The picture Mr. Jameson refers to was in the London
Memorial Exhibition, and there called Three Figures, Pink
and Grey. It was the same design Whistler used for one
of his Six Schemes or Projects,* which now all belong to Mr.
Freer. In them, he was trying to combine Japanese and
classical motives, expressing a beauty of form and design
that haunted him, and was perhaps best realised in the little
pastels of draped figures, classic in feeling, and as wholly

* Mr. Fenellosa, in an article apparently inspired by Mr. Freer, says there are
eight.
I48 [1868

THREE FIGURES

Pink and Grey

CHELSEA DAYS

his own in invention and arrangement as the Nocturnes and
the portraits. He never ceased to make these classic studies.
Years after, he gave Mr. T. R. Way a tiny drawing like a
cameo, which we reproduce. And there are numbers of
designs of the same sort owned by others. There are many
pastels, chalk drawings and several etchings in which the
separate figures of the Projects may be found, studies for the
series which never was completed ; one, owned by Mr. C. H.
Shannon, was worked out as a fan. Of the second version
of the Three Figures, enlarged from a smaller design, Mr.
Alan S. Cole remembers Whistler explaining it as an arrange-
ment of beautiful lines he wanted to carry out, and then
drawing in, with one sweep of the brush, the back of the
stooping figure to show what he meant. Whether there
was any commission for the series we are not sure, though
Mr. W. M. Rossetti most likely referred to it when he
wrote in his diary for July 28, 1867:

" Whistler is doing on a largish scale for Leyland the subject
of women with flowers, and has made coloured sketches of four
or five other subjects of the like class, very promising in point
of conception of colour and arrangement."

It is probable, therefore, that the Projects were his first
scheme of decoration for Leyland. The six canvases are
all, virtually, the same size. They mark the new develop-
ment in his technique and are painted with the thinnest, most
liquid colour, the canvas often showing through, and
nothing could be fresher and more spontaneous. The work
in all, save the finished Venus, shown in the Paris Memorial
Exhibition, and worked on in his later years, is more simple
and direct than anything in oil he ever did. They have
the same relation to his finished pictures as the sketches of
Rubens and Tiepolo to their great decorations. The Venus
stands alone, but, in the five others, two, three, or four
women are grouped against a balustrade, round a vase of

1868] 149

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

flowers, or on the sands with the sea beyond. In one
especially, No. 3, Symphony in Green and Violet, the figures, in
their strange beauty, recall Rossetti. Their floating draperies
give the scheme of colour : No. 1, Symphony in White, the
study for the larger version of the Three Figures ; No. 4,
Symphony in White and Red — " full palette " was his one
comment on this when he asked Mr. Cole to come round
and see it one Sunday ; No. 5, Variations in Blue and Green ;
No. 6, Symphony in Blue and Rose.

The experience gained by Whistler in making these designs
was of immense use to him when he painted the Nocturnes,
for the technique is the same, and the same treatment can be
seen in the pile of drapery on the left in the Miss Alexander.
He did not give up, until much later, this method of
painting. He never, we believe, exhibited the designs, and
it is doubtful if the complete series had been seen publicly
before they were shown in Paris in 1905. During all his
life, till the last when he was given a commission for a panel
in the Boston Public Library, Whistler hoped to carry out
some great decorative scheme. When the Central Gallery
at South Kensington was being decorated by Leighton and
others, Sir Henry Cole asked him to execute one of the panels
in mosaic. For this, in the winter of 1873, he made a pastel
of a richly robed figure carrying a Japanese umbrella. The
scheme was in blue, purple and gold, and the pastel, owned
by Mr. Graham Robertson, was shown at the London Memorial
Exhibition as Design for a Mosaic. He spoke of it at the
time as The Gold Girl. The small design was to be enlarged,
and put on a big canvas, which his " pupils," the brothers
Greaves, he said, would do for him. He was alive to its
importance, he wrote to Mr. Alan S. Cole, and his pride in
it was great. It has been stated that Sir Henry Cole offered
him a studio in the Museum when he was ready to begin his
large cartoon. " You know, Sir Henry Cole always liked
150 [1868

DESIGN FOR MOSAIC FOR SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM
(Pastel)

CHELSEA DAYS

me," was Whistler's story to us, " and I told him he ought
to provide me with a fine studio — it would be an honour to
me — and to the Museum ! " But models broke down, the
fog settled over London, he wanted to get through his Aca-
demy picture first, he was called to Paris on business. The
interruptions and delays were many. Whether the large
cartoon ever was finished, or whether, when finished, it was
found to be out of keeping with the academic and classic
machines by Royal Academicians which now fill the Central
Gallery, is not known. At any rate, this project was never
realised.

The year of Whistler's discouragements as a painter gave
fresh proof of the position accorded to him as an etcher.
Hamerton's Etching and Etchers was published in 1868.
Shortly before, he had written to Whistler :

" I wonder whether you would object to lend me a set of
proofs for a few weeks. As the book is already advanced, I should
be glad of an early reply. My opinion of your work is, on the
whole, so favourable, that your reputation could only gain by
your affording me the opportunity of speaking of your work
at length."

The only notice Whistler took of the request was to print
it years afterwards as the Unanswered Letter of The Gentle
Art. Hamerton, the critic, was not used to being ignored
by artists. He could not keep his irritation out of his book :

" I have been told that, if application is made by letter to
Mr. Whistler for a set of his etchings, he may, perhaps, if he
chooses to answer the letter, do the applicant the favour to let
him have a copy for about the price of a good horse."

Eventually, this comment, headed Inconsequences, was
placed after the Unanswered Letter. Hamerton admitted
that Whistler

" has very rare and very peculiar endowments, and may, in a

certain sense, be called great — that is, so far as greatness may

1868] 151

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

be understood of faculties which are rather remarkable for
keenness and originality than range."

But the praise is never without qualification. If Whistler
is a " fine etcher," he is a " strikingly imperfect artist.'
His work is often " admirable," but it is

"rarely affecting, because we can so seldom believe that the
artist himself has been affected. It is very observant, very
penetrating, very sensitive even, in a peculiar way, but not
poetically sensitive. . . . Whistler's etchings are not generally
remarkable for poetical feeling."

This last sentence was reprinted by Whistler as part of
Hamerton's Inconsequences. Hamerton also thought that
Whistler was a master of line, though he did not seem to
love anything, did not seem from his work ("I do not know
him personally," Hamerton's conscience forced him to say)
to be " altogether expansive or sympathetic, but self-con-
centrated and repellent of the softer emotions." In the end,
Whistler let Hamerton have a plate, Billingsgate, which, in
its third state, was published in the Portfolio for January
1878, and, two years after, in the third edition of Etching
and Etchers (1880), with Hamerton's original criticisms very
slightly modified.

Hamerton, temperate in his estimate of Whistler's work,
went to the extreme of exaggeration in his comments on
Whistler's prices. His success never induced Whistler
deliberately to increase the value of his etchings by making
them rare, in the fashion of the young men of to-day. It
was different with his dry-points, the number of impressions
being necessarily limited. Mr. Percy Thomas, in talks of
the old days and visits to Lindsey Row, has told us that
Whistler would throw them on the floor and consider them.
" I think for this we must say five guineas — and for this
six — and for this I must say — ten ! " Only once, however,
can Mr. Thomas remember an attempt, or a desire, on
152 [1868

CHELSEA DAYS

Whistler's part to create an artificial price. He had been
sent from Bond Street to Lindsey Row, with prints to leave
for Whistler to sign, and the next day he returned for them.
Whistler and Mrs. Whistler were sitting together, silent and
unhappy, and Whistler hurried from the studio without a
word. " But what is it ? What has happened ? " Mr.
Thomas asked, and then Mrs. Whistler explained that
Whistler had thrown the prints into the fire^-thinking it
would be a good thing to make them rare, and had been
miserable ever since. Another incident remembered by
Mr. Thomas would have altered Hamerton's idea of Whistler's
business methods. Edmund Thomas had gone to the
studio and offered a certain sum for all the prints in it at
the time. Whistler accepted the offer : Mr. Thomas drew
his cheque, satisfied with his part of the bargain, and carried
off the prints. A couple of hours later, a messenger appeared
at the shop with another bundle of proofs. Whistler had
come upon them in an unexpected corner of the studio ;
and sent word that, according to the bargain, they belonged
to Mr. Thomas.

Toward the end of the 'sixties, or beginning of the 'seventies,
shortly after the publication of Hamerton's book, Mr. Murray
Marks proposed to start a Fine Art Company with Alexander
lonides, Rossetti, Burne-Jones, and Morris. Their object
was to deal in pictures, prints, blue and white and decorative
work. They were to have the exclusive right to sell Watts',
Burne-Jones' and Rossetti's pictures, and Whistler's etchings,
possibly also his paintings. lonides, who was to advance
some two or three thousand pounds, as were the others,
bought with his own money the sixteen plates by Whistler
now known as The Thames Set, and all the prints from them
in his possession. The sum paid was three hundred pounds.
A secretary was engaged for the company, but, somehow,
that was the end of it. The plates were thus left the absolute
1868] 153

property of Mr. lonides. He had a hundred sets printed ;
he gave one set to each of his children ; the others were
taken over by Messrs. Ellis and Green, and the series published
by them as Sixteen Etchings of Scenes on the Thames, in 1871,
price twelve guineas. Later, the plates came into the posses-
sion of the Fine Art Society, and they sold the prints unsigned
as a set, in a portfolio, for fourteen guineas, or, singly, from
half a guinea apiece to two guineas and a half. Finally
Mr. Keppel of New York bought the plates, had the steel
facing removed, for they had been steeled, and got Mr.
Goulding to print a number of each, when some extremely
good prints were obtained. The plates were then, we believe,
destroyed.

All this while, official recognition of Whistler, the etcher
had continued. The British Museum kept on buying his
prints, and only stopped when, suddenly, a few years ago,
it was discovered that the work of living artists could not be
bought for the Print Room. The ignorance of this regulation
up till then was of value to the Museum, where there now
are one hundred and four prints. At the Victoria and Albert
Museum, South Kensington, there are sixty-one prints,
besides several issued in various publications, and there is
a second Thames Set in the lonides Collection. For several
years, dating from this period, Sir Richard R. Holmes
purchased etchings directly from Whistler for Windsor Castle
Library : about one hundred and forty in all. A list of
these is in the London Memorial Catalogue. Sir Richard
R. Holmes writes us :

" It is difficult for me to say when, or how, I first began the
collecting of Whistler's etchings. I had a few, and then I met
several while I was engaged in looking after other things at
Thibaudeau's, and then, gradually, I found I had so many that
I thought it best to make the collection as complete as I could,
and got many from Whistler himself."
154 [1871

CHELSEA DAYS

Often Sir Richard went to the studio ; often Whistler
sent prints to Windsor, which he thought should be there,
and which Sir Richard was only too glad to buy. The Venice
Set was bought, and the proofs in the Royal Library, or
some of them, at least, were the finest we have ever seen.
Curiously, they were sold at what was supposed to be
the height of the " Whistler boom," and after they had
been greatly praised at the Memorial Exhibitions in London
and Paris. As Sir Richard, however, had retired, and as
the King on his visit to the London Memorial Exhibition
expressed great surprise at the few he looked at, it is almost
certain that His Majesty had hitherto been unaware of the
fact that the collection was at Windsor. Even the Portfolio
presented by Whistler to Queen Victoria, with his auto-
graph letter asking her acceptance, was sold in 1906, the few
prints in Princess Victoria's apartments only being left. The
disposal of the collection was so badly managed that
this Jubilee Series alone brought more, when re-sold a few
weeks after the King parted with them, than His Majesty
got for the whole series. During Whistler's lifetime,
important collections of his etchings were acquired also
by the Museums of Dresden, Venice and Melbourne, among
others.

The success of Whistler's plates during 1868 and the
following years is in strong contrast to the fate of his
pictures which, from now on for a long period, received
officially little but neglect, and popularly little but
contempt. He had nothing in the Academy of 1868.
Mr. Jameson has told us of his despair when the Three
Girls was not finished in time, and of their wandering
together about town, in and out of galleries and museums,
until, at last, before Velasquez, in the National Gallery,
Whistler took heart again. In 1869 he did not have a
chance to profit by the improvement, when the Academy
1871] 155

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

moved to Burlington Gardens, and in one of its rare moments
of reform abolished "top line" and " crinoline line." In
1870, he had one picture, The Balcony. In 1871 there was
nothing. Nor, during these four years, did he have any-
thing in the Salon. Whistler, like Rossetti, was never
without his public, though many years passed before he
received from it Rossetti's rewards. He could rely on
practical recognition from the lonides ; from Mr. Leathart,
the Newcastle merchant ; from Frederick Leyland, the
Liverpool shipowner, a genius in his way, "the Liverpool
Medici " as Whistler called him to us ; from Mr. Huth, Mr.
Alexander, Mr. Rawlinson, Mr. Anderson Rose, Mr. Jameson,
the Chapmans, Mr. Potter. But, unlike Rossetti, he wanted
to show his work in official places, and receive for it official
honours. His absence from official exhibitions was then
seldom his fault ; he was always getting rejected at the
Academy. It was his hatred of rejection and fear of being
badly hung that drove him from exhibitions where he had
no control.

The tyranny of the Academy was no new thing. In the
'sixties and 'seventies, the opening of the Summer Exhibition
was almost every year the occasion of scandal and of protest
against an Academy that rejected the most distinguished
artists, or offered them the greater insult of skying their
work. One gallery after another took up the cause of
outsiders, or was established to take it up. After the Berners
Street Gallery came the Dudley, which, in 1867, added to
its show of water-colours an independent exhibition of oils ;
in 1868, the Corinthian Gallery in Argyll Street ; in 1869,
the Select Supplementary Exhibition in Bond Street, but
both these last were poor affairs, more apt to justify than
to expose the Academy. Dealers also came to the rescue,
more especially the directors of the French Gallery in Pall-
Mali, and the Society of French Artists organised at No. 168
156 [1871

VARIATION'S IX VIOLET AND GREEX

CHELSEA DAYS

New Bond Street, by M. Durand-Ruel, who came to London
in 1870, on account of the Franco-German War, bringing
with him his own collection and Laurent Richard's, and, who,
under the management of M. Charles Deschamps, gave
half-yearly exhibitions until 1877. In the French Gallery
and with the Society of French Artists, Whistler showed
many times. He also contributed often to the Dudley,
beginning in 1871, when he exhibited Variations and a
Harmony. The next year he exhibited several Symphonies
and, for the first time, an impression of night with the title
Nocturne. His use of titles to explain his pictorial intentions
was now so well established that this same year (1872), when
The White Girl and the Princesse were in the International
Exhibition at South Kensington, they were catalogued
respectively as Symphony in White, No. I., and Variations
in Flesh-colour, Blue and Grey, later changed to Grey
and Rose ; and he supplied the explanation, printed in
the Programme of Reception, that they were " the
complete results of harmonies obtained by employing
the infinite tones and variations of a limited number of
colours."

His portrait of his mother was sent to the Academy of
1872 with the title, Arrangement in Grey and Black:
Portrait of the Painter's Mother. It was refused at first.
There was indignation outside the Academy. Madox Brown
wrote to George Rae :

" I hear that Whistler has had the portrait of his mother turned
out. If so, it is a shame, because I saw the picture, and know
it to be good and beautiful, though, I suppose, not to the taste
of Messrs. Ansdell and Dobson."

There was indignation also inside the Academy. Sir William
Boxall threatened to resign from the Council if the portrait
was not hung, for he would not have it said that a committee
to which he belonged had rejected it. Similar threats have
1872] I57

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

been heard in recent years, and the rejected work has stayed
out, and the Academicians have stayed in. Boxall, though
an Academician, would not yield, and the picture was
hung, not well, yet not out of sight ; groups, it is said, were
always gathered before it to laugh. Still, there it was, the
last picture by Whistler at the Academy, where nothing of
his was again seen, save one etching in 1879, Putney Bridge,
published by the Fine Art Society, and perhaps sent by
them.

The whole affair made talk. But 1872 is interesting, not
so much because of this Academic scandal as because it is
the year when, for the first time, Whistler exhibited a portrait
as an Arrangement, and an impression of night as a Nocturne.

As it was the last time he ever showed a picture in the
Academy, it may be as well to complete here our account
of his relations with this institution. It is said that he put
his name down, or allowed it to be put down, for election.
He was never elected. Other Americans were, for the Royal
Academy is so broad in its constitution that an artist need
not be an Englishman, need not be resident in Great Britain,
need not have shown on its walls, to become a member or
honorary member. But, though during all these years and
until the day of his death, Whistler would have accepted
election, we have never heard that he obtained a single vote.
George Boughton, an American artist and a member, of
the Royal Academy, put the matter plainly when he said
that, if Whistler had " behaved himself "—behaved himself,
that is, according to the Academical idea of behaviour —
he would have been President. And this concession Boughton
felt it necessary to qualify.

" Now, if any one knowing Whistler and me should go about
thinking me serious in imagining that he would make a good
President — even of an East End boxing club — such persons live
in dense error."

158 [1872

CHELSEA DAYS

Whistler would have accepted election for one reason, and
one reason only — because of the official rank it would have
given him in England. Artistically, he felt himself more
distinguished than any member of the Royal Academy.
Though every recognition was withheld during his lifetime,
several Academicians attempted to secure for the Academy
a sort of reflex distinction by endeavouring to get together
a posthumous exhibition of his work — unsuccessfully. It
would, indeed, have been irony if the Academy had, in
return for its neglect of Whistler, got the kudos and profit
such an exhibition was sure to bring. Another instance of
what Americans call " graft " is the absence from the Chantrey
Collection of a picture by Whistler. The Trustees, although
they have bought their own work, paying as much as one
thousand pounds to Sir Edward J. Poynter, three thousand
to Sir Hubert von Herkomer, three thousand and fifty to
Lord Leighton, two thousand to Sir J. E. Millais, Bart.,
over two thousand to Mr. Frank Dicksee, two thousand to
Sir W. Q. Orchardson, two thousand to Vicat Cole, who are
or were members of the Council of the Academy, never
even offered the sixty pounds for which they might have
bought Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Gold : Old Batter-
sea Bridge, since purchased for two thousand by public
subscription, and given to the Tate Gallery. Is it any
wonder then that Whistler, disgusted with such conduct
towards him, especially on the part of his fellow countrymen
who might have elected him, left as his only request relative
to his pictures, the expressed wish that none of them
should ever find a place in an English Gallery ? In his case,
death even did not spare him Academical jealousy. Not
content with ignoring this man during his lifetime, officially
insulting his memory after his death, Sir Edward Poynter,
when he hung Old Battersea Bridge, first in the National
Gallery, affixed to it, or allowed to be affixed, a label on
1872] 159

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

which Whistler's name was misspelt, Whistler himself was
described as of the British School, and the title of the
picture was incorrectly given. The picture has since, by
the irony of fate, been placed in the Gallery of Modern
British Art !

160 [1872

CHAPTER XIII. NOCTURNES, THE YEARS
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-TWO TO EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-FOUR

WHISTLER was the first to paint the night. The blue
mystery that veils the world from dusk to dawn is
in the colour-prints of Hiroshige. But the wood block cannot
give the depth of the darkness, the medium makes a con-
vention of the colour. Hiroshige saw and felt the beauty,
and invented a wonderful scheme by which to suggest it
on the block, but he could not render the night as Whistler
rendered it on canvas.

If the colour-prints of Japan suggested the Nocturnes,
they were merely the suggestion. Whistler never imitated
the Japanese in their technique. Their composition did
impress him, their arrangement, their pattern, and some of
their detail. Often the very high or very low horizon, the
line of a bridge over a river, the spray of foliage across the
foreground, the golden curve of the falling rocket, the placing
of the figure on the shore, the signature in its oblong panel,
will show how much he learned from them. But these are
details. He abandoned them within a few years, but he
never gave up, he developed rather, what he always spoke
of as the Japanese theory of drawing. He translated Japanese
art — translate is the word — though he would have said he
" carried on the tradition " ; he adapted it to his own
methods in painting the Nocturnes. His idea was not to
go back to the Japanese as being greater than himself, but
to learn what he could from them, to state it in his own way
1872-74] I:L 161

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

and to produce another work of art: a work founded on
tradition no less than theirs, and yet as western as theirs
was eastern.

Night, beautiful everywhere from Valparaiso to Venice,
was never so beautiful as in London. First he painted the
Thames in the grey day, but, as time went on, he began to
paint it in the blue or rosy darkness that made of it a wonder-
land. Only those who have lived by the river for years, as
we have, can realise the truth as well as the beauty of the
Nocturnes. He still, like Courbet, " loved things for what
they were," but he chose them for their exquisiteness,
their tenderness, their poetry. The brutality or the " foolish-
ness " of Nature made no appeal to him. But Courbet
was not more of a realist than Whistler in the Nocturnes,
if realism means truth to Nature.

The long nights of observation on the river were followed
by long days of experiment in the studio. In the end, he gave
up even making notes of subjects and effects. It was impossible
for him to choose and mix his colours at night, and he was
compelled to trust to his memory, which he cultivated. In
his portraits and pictures, and in all work done by daylight,
he always had a model, or worked from the subject on the
spot. But, after all, as Mr. Bernhard Sickert has well pointed
out, looking at colours and their arrangement at night,
retaining the memory of them until the next morning when
he put them down, was " simply painting from Nature, the
only difference being a longer interval between observation
and execution." When he said that " Nature put him out,"
he meant that the whole arrangement as he found it in Nature
put him out ; it was never exactly as he wanted it. Few
painters understood better than he did the art of selection,
and here again Hiroshige and the other Japanese had been
of use to him. He went to Nature for the suggestion, the
motive. And yet, it is curious that he never could work
162 [1872-74

NOCTURNE, BATTERSEA
(Arrangement in fire// anil (told)

NOCTURNE
(Blue and Green)

NOCTURNES

without a model or, except in the Nocturnes, away from
Nature. This was why, as he said, Nature was at once his
master and his servant. The Nocturnes looked so simple
that to a public trained by the Pre-Raphaelites to believe the
signs of labour the chief merit of a picture, they seemed mere
sketches, unfinished, as Burne-Jones said. His letters to
Fantin are full of regret for his uncertainty, his slowness :
" Je suis si lent. . . . Les choses ne vont pas vite. . . . Je
produis pen parce que f efface tout ! " The public could know
nothing of the hard work and study that went to produce the
simplicity. In no other paintings was Whistler as successful
in obeying his own precept and concealing every trace
of effort and toil. One touch less in some of the Nocturnes,
and you feel that nothing might be left ; in others, one touch
more and the spell might be broken, and night stripped of
its mystery. To give the silhouette of bridge or building
against the sky ; the lines of light trailing their gold into
the water and leading to infinite distance ; the boats, ghosts
fading into the ghostly river ; the fall of rockets through
shadowy air — to give all these things, and yet to keep them
enveloped in the transparency of darkness, to preserve the
feeling of the London night, was the problem he set himself
and solved in the Nocturnes in blue and silver, blue and gold,
grey and silver, opal and silver, that were painted in the
little second-story back room at Chelsea.

Now every one can see these things, and night is like a
Whistler, for Whistler made people look at his pictures,
until it has become impossible to look at Nature at night
without remembering the Nocturnes. He painted the effect
that the world at night produced on him, and the great
artist, like the great author, moves people, makes them
think they see things as he does. Even in that ever-quoted
passage from the Ten o* Clock, he does not pretend to see
Nature as people see her, or as Nature seems to be ; his
1872-74] / 163

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

concern is with the impression that Nature at night made
on him, and in this he was an impressionist.

The brothers Greaves bought his materials and prepared
his canvas and colours. " I know all these things because
I passed days and weeks in the place standing with and
beside him," Walter Greaves has said to us. And so it
happens that, of the methods and materials of few other
modern painters, is there so accurate a record as of Whistler's
when he painted the Nocturnes. He reshaped his brushes
usually, heating them over a candle, melting the glue and
pushing the hairs into the form he wanted. Walter Greaves
remembers that the colours were mixed with linseed oil
and turpentine. Whistler told us that he used a medium
composed of copal, mastic and turpentine. The colours
were arranged upon a palette, a large oblong board
some two feet by three, with the Butterfly inlaid in one
corner and, round the edges, sunken boxes for brushes
and tubes. The palette was laid upon a table. He had
at various periods two or three of these, and at least one
stand, with many tiny drawers, upon which it fitted. At
times it was slightly tilted. At the top of the palette
the pure colours were placed, though, more frequently,
there were no pure colours at all. Large quantities of different
tones of the prevailing colour in the picture to be painted
were mixed, and so much medium was used that he called it
" sauce." Mr. Greaves says that the Nocturnes were mostly
painted on a very absorbent canvas, sometimes on panels,
sometimes on bare brown holland, sized. For the blue
Nocturnes, the canvas was covered with a red ground, or
the panel was of mahogany, which the pupils got from their
own boat-building yard, the red forcing up the blues laid
on it. Others were done on " practically a warm black,"
and for the fireworks there was a lead ground. Or, if the
night was grey, then, Whistler said, the sky is grey, and the
164 [1872-74

CKEMOKNE

(Nocturne)

CREMORNE
(Nocturne in Green and Gold)

NOCTURNES

water is grey, and therefore the canvas must be grey. Only
once, within Mr. Greaves' memory, was the ground white.
The ground, for his Nocturnes, like the paper for his pastels,
was chosen of the prevailing tone of the picture he wanted
to paint or of a colour which would give him that tone, not
to save work, but to save disturbing, *' embarrassing," his
canvas.

When Whistler had arranged his colour-scheme on the
palette, the canvas, which the pupils prepared, may have
been stood on an easel, but so much " sauce " was used
that, frequently, it had to be thrown flat on the floor to keep
the whole thing from running off. He washed the liquid
colours on to the canvas, lightening and darkening the tone
as he worked. In many Nocturnes, the entire sky and water
are rendered with great sweeps of the brush in exactly the
right tone. How many times he made and wiped out that
sweeping tone is another matter. When it was right, there
it stayed. With his life's knowledge of both the effects
he wanted to paint and the way to paint them, at times,
as he admits himself, he completed a Nocturne in a day.
In some he got his effect at once, in others it came only
after innumerable failures. If the tones were right, he took
them off his palette and kept them until the next day, in
saucers or dishes under water, so that he might carry on his
work in the same way with the same tones. Mrs. Anna Lea
Merritt tells us that when she lived in Cheyne Walk she
remembers " seeing the Nocturnes set out along the garden
wall to bake in the sun." Some were laid aside to dry
slowly in the studio, some were put in the garden or on the
roof to dry quickly. Sometimes they dried out like body-
colour in the most unexpected fashion. He had no recipe,
no system. The period was one of tireless research. He
had to " invent " everything, though he profited by the
technical training he had gained in painting the Six Project s
1872-74] 165

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Whistler first called his paintings of night " Moonlights."
" Nocturne " was Mr. Leyland's suggestion, as we have heard
from Mrs. Leyland, and her son-in-law, Val Prinsep, stated
in the Art Journal (August 1892), that Whistler wrote to
Leyland :

" I can't thank you too much for the name ' Nocturne ' as
the title for my moonlights. You have no idea what an irritation
it proves to the critics, and consequent pleasure to me ; besides
it is really so charming, and does so poetically say all I want
to say and no more than I wish."

Whether to mystify, or because he saw something new
in his pictures, Whistler repeatedly changed their titles,
especially of the Nocturnes, and repeatedly exhibited different
pictures with the same title. It is true, as Mr. Bernhard
Sickert writes :

" such alterations made by the artist himself stultify the whole
idea, and prove that the analogy with music does not hold
consistently. Any musician would tell us that we could not
change the title of Symphony in C minor to Sonata in G major
without making it an absurdity."

That he should either not have realised this fact, or else
have disregarded it deliberately, is the more extraordinary
because every Nocturne represents a different effect rendered
in a different fashion. Although he altered his titles himself,
nothing offended him more than when others tampered with
them or imitated them.

The painting of the Nocturnes continued for many years,
and in many places. But the greater number were painted
when he lived at No. 2 Lindsey Row, many from his own
windows, while few took him beyond Chelsea and Battersea
or Westminster. Through most the river flows : several
were done at Cremorne; one in Trafalgar Square, Chelsea.
He resented it when people urged literary titles for them,
1 66 [1872-74

OLD BATTERSEA BRIDGE

Nocturne, Blue and Gold

NOCTURNES

and he put his resentment into words that " make history "
in The Gentle Art :

" My picture of a ' Harmony in Grey and Gold ' is an illustration
of my meaning — a snow scene with a single black figure and a
lighted tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future
of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted
at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey
and gold is the basis of the picture. Now this is precisely what
my friends cannot grasp. They say, * Why not call it " Trotty
Veck," and sell it for a round harmony of golden guineas ? ' "

Lord Redesdale told us that it was he who suggested this
title, gaily. Whistler assured another friend that he had
only to write " Father, dear Father, come home with me now "
on the painting for it to become the " picture of the year."
But he never wanted to put into his pictures of night more
than was expressed in the title Leyland had given him.
Subject, sentiment, meaning were for him in the night itself
— the night in all its loveliness and mystery. There is no
doubt that he carried tradition further and made greater
advance in the Nocturnes than in any of his paintings. The
subjects are usually the simplest : factories, bridges, boats
and barges, shops ; but in his hands they became things of
beauty that will live for ever. The Nocturnes are not all
moonlights ; we remember only one, Southampton Water, in
which the moon itself appears, and there are others illumined
only by flickering lamplight. They are not invariably
pictures of night, but at times of dawn or of twilight. Nocturne,
however, is the name Whistler chose for all, and by it they
will always be known.

1872-74] 167

CHAPTER XIV. PORTRAITS FROM
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-TWO TO
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR

WHILE Whistler was painting the Nocturnes, he was also
working on the large portraits. The Mother was the
first. The charm of Mrs. Whistler's presence was felt by
every one who came near her, but by none so deeply as her son.
We cannot say just when Whistler began the picture ; he
wrote of it to Fantin, promising to send a photograph, in
1871 ; but it was not shown until 1872. How many were
the sittings, how often the work was scraped down, no one
will ever know. Some interesting technical details we have
from Mr. Greaves. The portrait was painted on the back
of a canvas, as J. saw when it was sent to the London Memorial
Exhibition, as Mr. Otto Bacher also saw when the picture
was in Whistler's studio in 1883.

" I noticed that it was painted on the back of a canvas, on the
face of which was the portrait of a child. My remark, 'Why
you have painted your mother on the back of a canvas ! * received
simply the reply : ' Isn't that a good surface ? ' "

There was scarcely any paint used, Mr. Greaves says, the
canvas being simply rubbed over to get the dress, and, as
at first the dado had been painted all across the canvas, it
even now shows through the black of the skirt. That
wonderful handkerchief in the tired old hands, Mr. Greaves
describes as " nothing but a bit of white and oil."

What Whistler wanted was to place upon a canvas a
beautiful arrangement, a beautiful pattern, of colour and of
168 [1872-74

PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER'S MOTHER
Arrangement in Grey and Black

PORTRAITS

line. No painter since Hals and Velasquez ever thought
so much of placing his figure on the canvas inside the frame »
not only do the long straight lines of the dado give the figure
its proper place, but the upright lines are repeated in the
hangings, and the two framed prints continue the square
quiet pattern. Better than any painter since Velasquez,
he understood the value of restrained line and restrained
colour. The long, vertical and horizontal lines of the back-
ground, even of the footstool and the matting, even the
brushwork on the wall, give quietness and peace to the
portrait, and the pose, that could be kept for ever, is more
dignified than the frenzied action preferred by certain of his
predecessors. Hamerton thought he must have found this
pose, or the hint for it, in the Agrippina at the Capitol in
Rome, or in Canova's statue of Napoleon's mother at Chats-
worth. If Whistler found it anywhere except in his own
studio, it could only have been at Haarlem, where Franz
Hals' old ladies sit together with something of the same
serenity and dignity expressed in much the same scheme
of colour. Whistler had been to Holland, he must then
have known the beautiful group, and memories of it may
have haunted him.

When Whistler wrote of the Mother to Fantin, he said that
if the picture marked any progress, it was in the science of
colour, and he made this clear in the title when the portrait
was exhibited at the Academy, and called Arrangement in
Grey and Black. Swinburne has not been alone in seeing its
" intense pathos of significance and tender depth of expres-
sion." But this is not what Whistler intended any one, save
himself, to see.

" Take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the Royal

Academy as ,an * Arrangement in Grey and Black.' Now that is

what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother ;

but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of

the portrait ? "
1872-74] 169

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

And yet friends did sometimes get a glimpse of the other
side. Mr. Harper Pennington writes us :

" Did I ever tell you of an occasion when Whistler let me
see him with the paint off — with his brave mask down ? Once
standing by me in his studio — Tite Street — we were looking at
the Mother. I said some string of words about the beauty of
the face and figure — and for some moments Jimmy looked and
looked, but he said nothing. His hand was playing with that
tuft upon his nether lip. It was perhaps two minutes before he
spoke. ' Yes,' very slowly, and very softly — ' Yes — one does
like to make one's mummy just as nice as possible ! ' "

Some understood at the time, among them Carlyle. Whistler
told us, one August evening in 1900, that Madame Venturi,
his friend, and Carlyle's too, determined that he should
paint Carlyle.

" I used to go often to Madame Venturi's — I met Mazzini
there, and Mazzini was most charming — and Madame Venturi
often visited me, and one day she brought Carlyle. The Mother
was there, and Carlyle saw it, and seemed to feel in it a certain
fitness of things, as Madame Venturi meant he should — he
liked the simplicity of it, the old lady sitting with her hands
folded on her lap — and he said he would be painted. And he
came one morning soon after that, and he sat down, and I had
the canvas ready, and the brushes and palette, and Carlyle
looking on, said presently : ' And now, mon, fire away ! ' I was
taken aback — that wasn't my idea of how work should be done.
Carlyle realised it, for he added : ' If ye're fighting battles or
painting pictures, the only thing to do is to fire away ! ' One
day he told me of others who had painted his portrait. ' There
was Mr. Watts, a mon of note. And I went to his studio, and
there was much meestification, and screens were drawn round
the easel, and curtains were drawn, and I was not allowed to
see anything. And then, at last, the screens were put aside
and there I was. And I looked. And Mr. Watts, a great mon,
he said to me, " how do ye like it ? " And then I turned to Mr.
Watts, and I said, " Mon, I would have ye know I am in the
hobit of wurin' clean lunen ! " ' "

Carlyle told people afterwards that he sat there talking

170 [1872-74

PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. II.

STUDY FOR THE " CARLYLE

PORTRAITS

and talking, and that Whistler went on working and working
and paid no attention to him whatever. Whistler found
Carlyle a delightful person, and Carlyle found him a workman.
And it has been said that they used to take walks together,
but of this there is no record.

Before the portrait was finished, Whistler had begun to
paint Miss Alexander, and another story, often told, is of a
meeting at the door of No. 2 between the old man coming out
and the little girl going in. " Who is that ? " he asked the
maid. Miss Alexander, who was sitting to Mr. Whistler,
she said. Carlyle shook his head. " Puir lassie ! Puir
lassie ! " and, without another word, he went out. Mrs.
Leyland, whose portrait also was begun before Carlyle' s
was finished, remembered that he grumbled a good deal.
Whistler, in the end, had to get Phil Morris to sit for the
coat. Mr. Greaves' memories are of much impatience in the
studio, especially when Carlyle saw Whistler working with
small brushes, so that Whistler, to quiet him, either always
worked with big brushes or pretended to. William Allingham
wrote in his diary of the sittings :

" Carlyle tells me he is sitting to Whistler. If C. makes signs
of changing his position, W. screams out in an agonised tone :
' For God's sake, don't move ! ' C. afterwards said that all
W.'s anxiety seemed to be to get the coat painted to ideal per-
fection ; the face went for little. He had begun by asking two
or three sittings, but managed to get a great many. At last C.
flatly rebelled. He used to define W. as the most absurd creature
on the face of the earth."

If Carlyle liked the portrait of the Mother, he must have
liked his own. There is the same quiet, tranquil balance,
the same careful spacing. Take away either the circular
print or the Butterfly in its circle, and the repose is gone.
But with such care has every detail been arranged, that one
never thinks of the balance, the arabesque, the pattern. It is
1 872-74] 171

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

done, and all traces of the thought and the work are gone.
One sees only the result Whistler meant should be seen.
It has been said to show a want of invention. But if the
background and the general scheme are the same as in the
Mother, it was because he painted it in the same room and
was deliberately carrying out the same idea. It was his
Arrangement in Grey and Black, No. II. In the London
Memorial Exhibition it hung opposite the Mother, and as
they were seen together, the pose and colour and design
belonged as inevitably to the nervous old man as to the old
lady in her beautiful tranquillity.

The Harmony in Grey and Green : Portrait of Miss Alex-
ander, a commission from Mr. W. C. Alexander of Campden
Hill, was painted at the same time, and proves how little
Whistler's invention was at fault. The arrangement was
now silvery grey and green. There was no repetition.
The little girl, in her white and green frock, holding at her
side her feathered hat, butterflies hovering about her, the
weariness of the pose expressed in the pouting red lips, as
she stands by the grey wall with its long lines of black, is
as familiar as Velasquez' Infantas in wide-spreading hoops.
Less known is Whistler's care in every detail to make the
picture the masterpiece it is. He, or else his mother,
gave Mrs. Alexander directions as to the quality of the muslin
for the daughter's gown, where it was to be bought, the width
of the frills, the ruffles at the neck, the ribbon bows, the way
the gown was to be laundried. And, only after repeatedly
seeing and studying the picture, does one learn his care in
weaving the same colours through his design. He calls the
portrait Harmony in Grey and Green, but the colours which
bind all this arrangement together, which play all though
it, are green and gold. So wonderfully are these colours used
like gold threads in tapestry, that one does not see them :
one simply feels the result. As always, there was the great

172 [1872-74

PORTRAIT OF MISS CICELY HKNUIKTTA AI.KXAXDKK
Harmony in drey and (Irccn

STUDY' FOR HEAD OF
CICELY H. ALEXANDER

PORTRAITS

simple design : the pose of Velasquez, the decoration of
Japan, and all worked out in his own way. The gold runs
along the top of the dado ; tiny gold buckles fasten the
rosettes of her shoes ; there is a gold pin in her hair ; the
gold of the daisies is repeated in the butterflies which flutter
above her head ; a note of gold is in the pile of drapery beside
her ; and the floor has a suggestion of gold in the matting.
Green plays the same note through the picture. The great
green sash is carried down by the green feather of her
hat, lost in the shadow which, also, is filled with green and
gold. And the green of the daisies is again repeated in the
green of the drapery. It is not until one has gone all over
the picture that these things become evident. Her shoes
look perfectly black, and so does the dado, and yet there is
no pure black anywhere. The whole is bound together by
this grey, green, black and gold scheme running though
the composition. It is a perfect harmony. And so subtle
is it, that only the result is evident, never the means by
which it was obtained.

The story of the sittings we have from Miss Cicely
Alexander herself (now Mrs. Spring-Rice) :

" My father wanted him to paint us all, I believe, beginning
with the eldest (my sister, whom he afterwards began to paint,
but whose portrait was never finished). But after coming down
to see us, he wrote and said he should like to begin with ' the
light arrangement,' meaning me, as my sister was dark. So I
was the first victim, and I'm afraid I rather considered that I
was a victim all through the sittings, or rather standings, for he
never let me change my position, and I believe I sometimes used
to stand for hours at a time. I know I used to get very tired
and cross, and often finished the day in tears. This was especially
when he had promised to release me at a given time to go to a
dancing class, but when the time came I was still standing, and
the minutes slipped away, and he was quite absorbed and had
forgotten all about his promise, and never noticed the tears ;
he used to stand a good way from his canvas, and then dart at
1872-74] 173

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

it, and then dart back, and he often turned round to look in a
looking-glass that hung over the mantelpiece at his back — I
suppose to see the reflection of his painting. Although he was
rather inhuman about letting me stand on for hours and hours,
as it seemed to me at the time, he was most kind in other ways :
if a blessed black fog came up from the river, and I was allowed
to get down, he never made any objection to my poking about
among his paints, and I even put charcoal eyes to some of his
sketches of portraits done in coloured chalks on brown paper ;
and he also constantly promised to paint my doll, but this pro-
mise was never kept. I was painted at the little house in Chelsea,
and at the time he was decorating the staircase ; it was to have
a dado of gold, and it was all done in gold leaf, and laid on by
himself, I believe ; he had numberless little books of gold leaf
lying about, and any that weren't exactly of the old gold shade
he wanted, he gave to me.

" Mrs. Whistler was living then, and used to preside at delightful
American luncheons, but I don't remember that she ever came
into the studio — a servant used to be sent to tell him lunch was
ready, and then we went on again as before. He painted, and
despair filled my soul, and I believe it was generally tea-time
before we went to those lunches, at which we had hot biscuits
and tinned peaches, and other unwholesome things, and I believe
the biscuits came out of a little oven in the chimney, though I
can't quite think how that could have been. The studio was
at the back of the house, and the drawing-room looked over the
river, and we seldom went into it, but I remember that it had
matting on the floor, and a large Japanese basin with water,
and gold-fish in it. I never met Mr. Carlyle in the studio,
although he was being painted at the same time, but he shook
hands with me at the private view at the Grosvenor Gallery,
where the two portraits were exhibited for the first time. [This
must have been at Whistler's own exhibition in 1874.] I didn't
appreciate that honour at the time, any more than I appreciated
being painted by Mr. Whistler, and I'm afraid all my memories
only show that I was a very grumbling, disagreeable little girl.
Of course I was too young to appreciate Mr. Whistler himself,
though afterwards we were very good friends when I grew older,
and when he used to come to my father's house and make at
once for the portrait Vith his eye-glass up."
174 [1872-74

STUDIES FOR "THE BLUE GIRL" (MISS FLORENCE LEYLAXD)

SKETCHES OF MISS GRACE ALEXANDER

PORTRAITS

It is said that the tears were not only on the little girl's
side, but on Whistler's, and that there were seventy sittings
before he finished the portrait. Mrs. Spring-Rice writes
nothing about the number of times the picture was scraped
down and re-commenced. He was beginning at this time to
try to paint the entire work at once, which, on such large
canvases was of the utmost difficulty. That he succeeded
is proved by the picture. But the technical record is neither
full nor satisfactory. ^Vhat his colours were, how he applied
them, whether he used enormously long brushes, no one
recorded. There is this of interest from Mr. Walter Greaves,
that the picture was painted on an absorbent canvas, and
on a distemper ground.

- Whistler was as minute in his directions for the portrait
of Miss May Alexander. He again explained his scheme
for the dress ; he recommended to Mrs. Alexander a milliner
who sold wonderful " picture hats " ; he suggested that he
should paint the portrait in Mrs. Alexander's drawing-room
at Campden Hill, so that he could see the effect of the picture
in the surroundings where it was to hang, and this was done.
But the portrait remains a sketch, of a girl in riding-habit
drawing on her gloves ; at her side is a pot of flowers, the one
complete passage in the picture. He made a number of
sketches in oils, chalk, pen and ink, of the children he was
to paint, and Mr. Alexander has several of these. But only
the Arrangement in Grey and Green was finished. There is
also a delightful study for the head.

At this same time Mr. Leyland gave Whistler commissions
to paint his four children, Mrs. Leyland and himself. Ley-
land had not yet bought his London house, but often came
up to town, usually staying at the Alexandra Hotel, and
Whistler made long visits at Speke Hall, Leyland's place
near Liverpool. Mrs. Whistler spent months there, and her
kindness in nursing the children through scarlet fever is
1872-74] 175

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

remembered. The record of these visits is in the etchings
and dry-points of Speke Hall and Speke Shore, Shipping at
Liverpool and The Dam Wood and the portraits in many
mediums. The house was not far from the sea, which he
loved to paint. But often days passed without his finding
the effect he wanted. The beach was flat, and, at low tide,
the sea ran away from him, and at high tide the skies were
wrong, or the wind blew. But Speke Hall always put him
in better mood for work, and when the sea failed he turned
to the portraits. The big canvases travelled with him, back-
ward and forward, between Speke Hall and London, and the
sittings were continued in both places. They all sat to him.
The children hated posing as much as they delighted in
Whistler. The son, after three sittings, refused to sit again,
which is a pity, for the pastel of him, lounging in a chair,
with his big hat pushed back and his long legs stretched out,
is full of childhood. There are pastels of the three little
girls, sketches in pen and ink, and the fine group of dry-
points. Of Elinor Leyland, a large full-length oil was started
the first of his Blue Girls, in which he wished to paint blue
on blue as he had painted white on white. Another, of
Florence Leyland, was we believe never exhibited until it
was purchased, in 1906, for the Brooklyn Museum, where
it now hangs. The oil of Mr. Leyland was the only one
completed.

Whistler painted Leyland standing, in evening dress, with
the ruffled shirt he always wore, against a dark background,
an arrangement of black on black. Leyland was good about
standing, Mrs. Leyland says, but he had not much time,
and few portraits gave Whistler more trouble. Leyland
told Val Prinsep that Whistler nearly cried over the drawing
of the legs. Mr. Greaves says that " he got into an awful
mess over it," painted it out again and again, and finally
had in a model to pose for it nude. But it was finished in
176 [1872-7*

PORTRAIT OF MRS.^F. R. LEYLAND
Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink

t w

PORTRAITS

the winter of 1873. He also painted a study for it, shown
in the London Memorial Exhibition. In the portrait of
Leyland he began to suppress the background, to put the
figures into the atmosphere in which they stood, without
any accessories. The problem now was the atmospheric
envelope, to make the figures stand in this atmosphere, as
far within their frames as he stood from them when he painted
them, and at this problem he worked as long as he lived.
The portrait is now owned by Mr. Freer.

Mrs. Leyland had more leisure than her husband, and the
sittings were an amusement to her. She had already sat
to Rossetti, she was to sit to more than one other artist.
She was a beautiful woman, with wonderful red hair. Whistler
made a dry-point of her, The Velvet Gown, and in black
velvet she wanted him to paint her. But he preferred a
dress in harmony with the hair, and designed soft draperies
of rose and white falling in sweeping folds, and rosettes of
a deeper shade to break the simplicity of the flowing lines,
and he placed her against a rose-tinted wall, with a spray
of almond blossoms at her side. In no other portrait did
he attempt a scheme of colour at once so sumptuous and so
delicate. The pose was as beautiful, one natural to her she
says, though he made a number of pastel studies before he
decided upon it. Her back is turned towards you, her arms
fall loosely, the hands clasped behind her, and her head is in
profile. Mrs. Leyland remembers days when, at the end of
the sitting, the portrait looked as if a few hours' work the
next day was all it needed. But, in the morning, she would
find it scraped down, with the work to be done over again.
Notwithstanding the innumerable sittings she gave, one of
Whistler's models, Maud Franklin, whom he now was so
often to etch and to paint, was called in to pose for the
draperies. Whistler knew what he wanted, and nothing less
would satisfy him. It must be beautiful to be worthy of
1872-74] i : M 177

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

the weariness it caused her, he told Mrs. Leyland, and he
was trying for the little more that meant perfection. The
portrait was not finished, and yet, if it were, it could hardly
be lovelier in line and colour. Here it was a problem, not
of luminous dark, but of luminous light, and the accessories
had not been suppressed. The matting on the floor, the
dado, and the spray of almond blossoms are more elaborately
carried out than the detail in any other portrait. What
worried him, and probably prevented the picture being
finished, are the hands, which are almost untouched. It was
not that he could not draw hands, for they are beautifully
drawn in some of the etchings. But there is as little doubt
that he rarely painted them well. He nearly always left
them to the last, and some of his later pictures were un-
finished because he could not get the hands right. The
Sarasate, The Little White Girl, the Symphony in White,
No. III., are almost the only ones in which the hands are
beautifully painted. Some one has said that an artist is
known by his painting of hands. These three pictures prove
that Whistler could paint hands, but it is as true that he
did not paint them when he could help it.

The portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth was not only begun but
finished during these years. It is Holbein-like in its dignity,
its sobriety, the flat modelling, the exquisite rendering of the
lace at the throat and the wrists. Mrs. Huth wears the
black velvet Mrs. Leyland wanted to wear, and the back-
ground is black with a wonderful luminous and intense depth.
She, too, stands with her back turned, and her head in
profile. In this portrait, as in the full-length Leyland,
Whistler carried out his method of putting in the whole
picture at once. The background was as much a part of
the design as the face. If anything went wrong anywhere
the whole picture had to come out and be started again. It
was a problem of great difficulty, but the system taught by
178 [1872-74-

PORTRAIT OF F. R. LEYLAND
Arrangement in

STUDY FOR POBTKAIT OK F. R. LKYLAXD

PORTRAITS

Gleyre, and developed in the Nocturnes, was perfected in
the portraits of Leyland and Mrs. Huth. The tones, made
from a very few colours of infinite gradations, were mixed
on the great palette, with black as the basis.

Mrs. Leyland sometimes met Mrs. Huth as they came and
went for their sittings, and this fixes the date of the portrait.
Mrs. Huth was not strong, and Whistler exhausted the
strongest who posed for him. Almost daily during one summer
he kept her standing for three hours without rest. At last
she rebelled. Mr. Watts, she said, who also had painted her
had not treated her in that way. " And still, you know,
you come to me ! " was Whistler's comment. He had some
mercy, however, and at times a model stood for her gown.

With the exception of the Mother, not one of these portraits
appeared in an exhibition for some years. After the Academy
of 1874 opened with nothing of his in it, he took matters
into his own hands, and, as Courbet had done in 1855, and
Manet in 1867, organised a show of his own : his first " one
man " show. The gallery was at No. 48 Pall Mall. The
pictures, thirteen in number, included the large portraits, a
few Nocturnes, one or two earlier paintings and one or two
of the Projects. There were also fifty prints. The walls,
as Mrs. Stillman remembers them, were grey, the pictures
were well spaced, there were palms and flowers, blue pots
and bronzes, and it was all very beautiful. He designed
the card of invitation, the simple card he always used, and
with his mother and his pupils, and their family, wrote the
names and addresses, " all making Butterflies as hard as we
could," Mr. Greaves says, rushing out and posting the cards
until the letter-boxes of Chelsea were in a state of congestion
unprecedented in that quiet corner of London. The private
view was on June 6.

The exhibition was a shock to London. Such defiance
might be understood in Paris, though even there the action
1872-74] , 179

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

of Courbet and Manet was questioned ; in London, it was
new, and therefore to be suspected. The decorations were
an indiscretion ; no one had before suggested to people
whose standard was the Academy that a show of pictures
might be beautiful. The work was a more serious offence.
Portraits, called Arrangements or Symphonies scandalised a
generation who, blinded by the yearly Academic display,
could not see the beauty of Whistler's flat modelling, and
of flesh low in tone, and who would have frankly confessed
their preference for the " foolish sunset " to the poetry of
night. But even the pictures could have been forgiven more
easily than the titles. From the moment he exhibited
Arrangements and Nocturnes, his growing reputation for
eccentricity was established beyond a doubt.

" I know that many good people think my nomenclature
funny and myself ' eccentric.' Yes, ' eccentric ' is the adjective
they find for me. The vast majority of English folk cannot and
will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story
which it may be supposed to tell. ... As music is the poetry
of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-
matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour."

He had robbed them of their only pleasure in art. Well
received at first, his position in public favour had, for the
last few years, hung in the balance. Now, his exhibition
weighed in the scales against him, and from this time on,
for almost twenty years, ridicule was his portion. The
exhibition exasperated the critics. The Athenceum and the
Saturday Review took no notice of it. The Pall Matt, remem-
bering Hamerton, saw in the collection more intellect than
imagination. Here and there was a polite murmur of " noble
conception " and " Velasquez touch." Of all that was said
Whistler singled out for notice then, and preservation after-
wards, the comments of a forgotten journal, the Hour. It
has been wondered why he noticed papers of such small
180 [1872-74

PORTRAIT OF MRS. HUTH
Arrangement in Black, No. II.

PORTRAITS

importance. When he answered the critics, and kept the
correspondence, it was " to make history," he said, and he
selected what he thought important, though it might come
from an insignificant source. The Hour suggested that the
best works in the show were not of recent date ; Whistler
wrote to remove " the melancholy impression " ; and notice
and letter " make history," for it was about this moment
that it began to be said of him in England, France having
taken the lead, that he did not fulfil his early promise, and
it is all recorded in The Gentle Art.

1872-74

181

CHAPTER XV. THE OPEN DOOR.
THE YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED
AND SEVENTY-FOUR AND AFTER

" "VTTHISTLER laughed all his troubles away," it has been
said. When the Academy rejected him, and the
critics sneered at his pictures shown in other galleries, and
the public took the critics seriously, he laughed the louder,
and felt the more. Polite English ears shrank from his
laugh — " his strident peacock laugh," Mr. Colvin called it.

" He was a man who could never bear to be alone," Mr.
Percy Thomas says ; he never could be alone all his life.
" The door in Lindsey Row was always open," and Whistler
liked to think that at his friends' houses the door was open
to him. Lord Redesdale, who came to live in the Row in
1875, says that Whistler was always running in and out.
Through his own open door strange people drifted. If they
amused him, he forgave them, however they presumed, and
they usually did presume. There was a man who, at this
time, he said, came to dine one evening, and, asking to stay
over night, remained three years :

" Well, you know, there he was — and that was the way he
had always lived — the prince of parasites ! He was a genius, a
musician, the first of the ' ^Esthetes,' before the silly name was
invented. He hadn't anything to do — he didn't do anything
for me — but decorate the dinner-table, arrange the flowers, and
then play the piano, and talk, and make himself amiable. He
hadn't any enthusiasm — that's why he was so restful. He was
always ready to go to Cremorne with me — it was the time of the
Nocturnes. At moments my mother objected to such a loafer
182 [1874-

THE OPEN DOOR

about the house. And I would say to her — ' well — but — my
dear mummy, who else is there to whom we could say, play, and
he would play ; and, stop playing, and he would stop right away ! '
Then I was ill. He couldn't be trusted with a message to the
doctor or the druggist, and he was only in the way. But he had
the good sense to see it, and to suggest it was time to be going
— so he left for somebody else ! It never occurred to him there
was any reason he shouldn't live like that."

We have heard of many others. One, to whom Whistler
entrusted the money for the weekly bills, gave lunches to
his friends and sent flowers and chocolates right and left,
while Whistler's debts multiplied into fabulous sums at the
butcher's and the grocer's.

Artists and art students came through the open door to
see and to learn and were welcomed. If, however, they
came to loaf and to play, they paid for it. They ran
errands, posted letters, sat in the corner, interviewed greater
bores than themselves. They had to give up all their time,
and then the end came, and out they went.

One story in Chelsea is of a Frenchman who taught art
and sold tapestry. Whistler bought a number of things
from him. " But vill he pay, zis Vistlaire, vill he pay ? "
the man asked, and, at last one evening he went to Lindsey
Row. A cab was at the door. The maid said Whistler was
not in, but the man heard his voice and pushed past, and
said afterwards :

" Upstairs, I find him, before a little picture painting, and
behind him ze bruzzers Greaves holding candles. And Vistlaire,
he say, ' You are ze very man I vant ; hold a candle ! ' And
I hold a candle. And Vistlaire he paint, and he paint, and zen he
take ze picture, and he go downstairs, and he get in ze cab, and
he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and I see him no more. Mon
Dieu, il est terrible, ce Vistlaire ! "

But he was paid the next day.

Few men depended more on companionship than Whistler,
and to few was the companionship women alone can give

1874-] 183

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

more essential. All his life, he retained his cceur de femme
and most of his friends were women. For years, until her
health broke down, his mother was always with him. Many
wondered, with Val Prinsep who thought Whistler " always
acting a part," whether,

" behind the poseur, there was not quite a different Whistler.
Those who saw him with his mother were conscious of the fact
that the irrepressible Jimmy was very human. No one could
have been a better son, or more attentive to his mother's wishes.
Sometimes old Mrs. Whistler, who was a stern Presbyterian in
her religion, must have been very trying to her son. Yet Jimmy,
though he used to give a queer smile when he mentioned them,
never in any way complained of the old lady's strict Sabbatarian
notions, to which he bowed without remonstrance."

Whistler seldom painted men except when they came for
their portraits, and the models, drifting in and out of the
open door of Lindsey Row, were mostly women. He liked
to have them with him. Mr. Thomas thinks he felt it
necessary to see them about the studio, for, as he watched
their movements, they would take the pose he wanted, or
suggest a group, an arrangement. An admirable example
is the Whistler in his Studio, done in the first house in Lindsey
Row. It was a beautiful study, he wrote to Fantin, for a
big picture, like the Hommage a Delacroix, with Fantin,
Albert Moore, and himself, the " White Girl " on a couch,
and la Japonaise walking about, grouped together in his
studio : all that would shock the Academicians. The colour
was to be dainty, — he in pale grey, " Joe " in white, la
Japonaise in flesh-colour, Albert Moore and Fantin to give the
black note. The canvas was to be ten feet by six. If he
ever did more than make the study of the two girls and him-
self, it has disappeared. The painting is owned by Mr.
Douglas Freshfield, and is as dainty as he described it. He
holds the small palette he sometimes used, with raised edges
184 [1874-

WHISTLES IX HIS STUDIO

THE OPEN DOOR

to keep the liquid colour from running off, he wears the long
sleeved white waistcoat in which he usually painted, and he
put down simply what he saw in the mirror. The two
women most likely are the two models for Symphony in
White, No. III. who have just stopped posing. Another
version of this studio interior, but there is some doubt
as to its genuineness, is in the City of Dublin Art Gallery.
Whistler repudiated it at the last. There is nothing else
of the kind as complete, but there are innumerable studies
of figures, reading or sewing, really not posing, though
the minute he started to draw them they had to pose.
Everybody who was with him, and somebody always was,
had, sooner or later, to sit to be painted, etched or drawn.

Refugees from France in 1870 drifted through the open
door, artists whose work was stopped by the Commune and
who came to England to take it up again. There were many,
Tissot, Dalou, Professor Lante'ri. Fantin stayed in Paris, but
later told stories of the siege which Whistler repeated to us.
He asked Fantin what he did ? " Me ? " replied Fantin, " I
hid in the cellar. Je suis poltron, moi." Tissot, within the
open door, found the inspiration for his pictures on the river.

Journalists, critics, hurried to Lindsey Row, once they
knew the door was open. Mr. Walter Greaves, who some-
times showed the studio, remembers doing the honours for
Tom Taylor among others. Mr. Sidney Starr says Whistler
told him that, while the Miss Alexander was in the studio,
Tom Taylor was there one day :

" There were other visitors. Taylor said, ' Ah, yes, urn,' then
remarked that the upright line in the panelling of the wall was
wrong, and the picture would be better without it, adding, ' Of
course, it's a matter of taste.' To which Whistler replied, 'I
thought that perhaps for once, you were going to get away
without having said anything foolish ; but remember, so that
you may not make the mistake again, it's not a matter of taste
at all, it is a matter of knowledge. Good-bye."
1874-] 185

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Journalists and critics filled columns with praise of un-
known masterpieces by forgotten Academicians, but seldom
spared space for the work in Lindsey Row. Their gossip,
after the visit, was about the man, not his pictures.

Poets, the younger literary men, came in through the open
door. Mr. Edmund Gosse, introduced by Mr. W. M. Rossetti,
has described to us his impressions of the bare room, with
little in it but the easel, and of the small, alert, nervous man
with keen eyes and beautiful hands, who sat before it, looking
at his canvas, never moving but looking steadily for twenty
minutes or half an hour perhaps — and then, of a sudden,
dashing at it, giving it one touch, and saying, " There, well,
I think that will do for to-day ! " an all-astonishing ex-
perience to a generation accustomed to tapestried studios
and painters more industrious with their hands than their
brains. ,

The fashionable world also began to crowd through the
open door. Lindsey Row was lined with the carriages of
Mayfair and Belgravia. Whistler was the fashion, if his
pictures were not, and he could say nothing, he could do
nothing, that did not go the rounds of drawing-rooms and
dinner-tables. " Ha ha ! I have no private life ! " he told
a man who threatened him with some sort of exposure. And,
from this time onward, he never had.

He knew just how much his popularity meant. It was
among the people who gathered about him because he was
the fashion, that he could not afford to have friends. " To
the rare Few, who, early in Life have rid Themselves of the
Friendship of the Many," The Gentle Art is dedicated, and
he got rid of all unnecessary friends at the start, he often
said. It was thought that he could not live without fighting,
that to him " battle was the spice of life." But he never
fought until fighting was forced upon him. There were no
fights, just as there was no mystery, at first. Every man
186 [1874-

THE OPEN DOOR

was a friend until he proved himself an enemy. When
the fighting began, Whistler got pleasure out of it, no doubt,
" the springs in him prompt for the challenge." He liked a
fight, enjoyed it, roared over it, would shake himself joyously
to and fro in talking of it, Lord Redesdale has told us of the
Lindsey Row days, when Whistler would come to him in the
morning at breakfast, or in the evening after dinner, to read
the latest correspondence, and laugh over the dulness of the
enemy. Though Whistler could not afford friends, he
delighted in society, finding in it the change most men find
in sport or travel. He hated to go away or to stop his work.
Hunting and fishing were no pleasure to him. We never
heard of his attempting to shoot, except once at the Ley-
lands' when, he said : " I rather fancied I had shot part of
a hare, for I thought I saw the fluff of its fur flying. I knew
I hit a dog, for I saw the keeper taking out the shots ! " His
solicitor, Mr. William Webb, tried once to teach him to
ride a bicycle. " Learn it ? No," he said to us. " Why,
I fell right off — but I fell in a rose-bush ! " Motoring
offended him, and he always abused J. for taking it up.
But people amused him, and he enjoyed the "parade of
life."

From the first, at Lindsey Row, he gave his breakfasts
and dinners. Mr. Luke lonides remembers calling one early
afternoon when

" Jimmy was busy putting things straight — he asked me if I
had any money. I told him I had twelve shillings. He said
that was enough. We went out together, and he bought three
chairs at two and sixpence each, and three bottles of claret at
eighteenpence each, and three sticks of sealing-wax of different
colours at twopence each. On our return he sealed the top of
each bottle with a different coloured wax. He then told me he
expected a possible buyer to dinner, and two other friends. When
we had taken our seats at the table, he very solemnly told the
maid to go down and bring up a bottle of wine, one of those
187 4-] ' 187

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

with the red seal. The maid could hardly suppress a grin, but
I alone saw it. Then, after the meat, he told her to fetch a bottle
with the blue seal ; and with dessert the one with the yellow
seal was brought, and all were drunk in perfect innocence and
delight. He sold his picture, and he said he was sure the sealing
• wax had done it."

This was very like him. All his life he invented wines
and was continually making " finds." We remember his
discovery of a wonderful Croute Mallard at the Cafe Royal,
and an equally wonderful Pouilly supplied by his French
barber, who had been one of Napoleon III.'s generals, or
Maximilian's aides-de-camp. Another thing at the Cafe
Royal, besides the menu that interested him, was the N on
the wine-glasses which were said to have come from the
Tuileries in 1870, but, no matter how many have been
broken, is still there.

We have the story of his first dinner-party from Mr. Walter
Greaves, one of whose workmen was sent to Madame Venturi's
to borrow and came back hung about with pots and kettles
and pans, and from Mrs. Leyland, who lent her butler, and
who, at the last moment, with her sister, put up muslin
curtains at the windows. Different guests remember
Whistler's alarm when a near-sighted young lady in white
mistook the Japanese bath, filled with water-lilies, for a divan,
and tried to sit in it ; and Leyland's disgust when Grisi's
daughter, whom he took in to dinner, would talk to him
not of music, but of Ouida's novels. Every one found the
menu " a little eccentric, but excellent." The earliest menu
we have seen is one, in Mr. Walter Dowdeswell's possession,
of a dinner in the 'eighties, not in the least eccentric, but as
simple as it is characteristic of Whistler, and so we give it now:
Potage Potiron ; Soles Frites ; Bceuj a la Mode ; Chapon au
Cresson; Salade Laitue ; Marmalade de Pommes ; Omelette
au Fromage.
188 [1874-

PORTRAIT OF LUKK A. IONIUES

THE OPEN DOOR

Mr. Alan S. Cole's diary is the record of other dinners in
the 'seventies, of the company, and the talk :

" November 16, 1875. — Dined with Jimmy ; Tissot, A. Moore
and Captain Crabb. Lovely blue and white china — and capital
small dinner. General conversation and ideas on art unfettered
by principles. Lovely Japanese lacquer.

" December 7, 1875. — Dined with Jimmy ; Cyril Flower, Tissot,
Storey. Talked Balzac — Pere Ooriot — Cousine Bette — Cousin
Pons — Jeune Homme de Province d Paris — Illusions perdues.

"January 6, 1876. — With my father and mother to dine at
Whistler's. Mrs. Montiori, Mrs. Stansfield and Gee there My
father on the innate desire or ambition of some men to be creators,
either physical or mental. Whistler considered art had reached
a climax with Japanese and Velasquez. He had to admit
natural instinct and influence — and the ceaseless changing in
all things.

" March 12, 1876. — Dined with Jimmy. Miss Franklin there.
Great conversation on Spiritualism, in which J. believes. We
tried to get raps — but were unsuccessful, except in getting noises
from sticky fingers on the table.

" March 25, 1876. — Round to Whistler's to dine. Mrs. Leyland
and Mrs. Galsworthy, and others.

"September 16, 1876.— Dined with W. Eldon there. Hot
discussion about Napoleon (Napoleon le petit, by Hugo). The
Commune, with which J. sympathised [some old fellow feeling
for Courbet, the reason perhaps]. — Spiritualism.

" December 29, 1876.— To dine with J.— the Doctor.— Goldfish
in bowl. Japanese trays. — Storks and birds. He read out two
or three stories by Bret Harte — Luck of Roaring Camp, — The
Outcasts of Poker Flat — Tennessee's Partner. Chatted as to
doing illustration for a Catalogue for Mitford, and to his Japanese
woman, and a decorated room for the Museum.

" February 18, 1878.— To Whistler's.— Mark Twain's haunting
jingle in the tramcar : ' Punch — punch — punch with care —
punch in the presence of the passenger (jaire).

"March 27, 1878. Dined with Whistler, young Mills and
Lang, who writes. He seemed shocked by much that was said
by Jimmy and Eldon."
187 4-] 189

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Whistler delighted not only in Mark Twain's, but in all
jingles. He had an endless stock, and recited them in the
most unexpected places and at the most inappropriate
moments. He went to the trouble once to write down for
us the lines of the WoodchucJc, and now, as we read them in
the familiar writing, we can only wonder why they never
seemed foolish but quite right as he chanted them. In the
Haden correspondence, published in The Gentle Art, a new
version of Peter Piper may be found. He loved to quote
the Danbury News man and the Detroit Free Press. He
never lost his joy in certain forms of American humour,
and it was because there was something of the same spirit
in them that Rossetti's limericks appealed to him.

Whistler " invented " Sunday breakfasts. The day was
unusual in London, and also the hour, twelve instead of nine.
" Nothing • exactly like them have ever been seen in the
world. They were as original as himself or his work, and
equally memorable," George Boughton wrote. Whistler
took with them infinite pains. He designed the card of
invitation, he arranged the table, and he saw that every-
thing placed on it was beautiful : the blue and white he was
years in collecting, the silver, the linen, the Japanese bowl
of goldfish, or the jar of flowers in the centre. If his own
resources failed, he borrowed from Lord Redesdale, two
doors off, or, after his brother was married, from Mrs. William
Whistler, whose beautiful pieces of Japanese lacquer were his
admiration. He prepared the menu, partly American, partly
French, and wholly bewildering to joint-loving Britons. His
buckwheat cakes are not yet forgotten. He would make
them himself, if the party were quite informal, and he never
spoke again to one man who ventured to dislike them.

Sometimes eighteen or twenty sat down to breakfast, more
often half that number. All were people Whistler wanted
to meet, people who talked, people who painted, people who
190 [1874-

PORTRAIT OF WHISTLER WITH HAT

THE OPEN DOOR

wrote, people who bought, people who were distinguished,
people who were royal, people who were friends. From Mr.
Cole, again, we have notes of the company and talk at some
of the breakfasts :

"June 17, 1877.— To breakfast at J.'s. F. Dicey, young
Potter and Huth there. He showed some studies from figures
— light and elegant — to be finished.

",/wne 29, 1879.— To Whistler's for breakfast. Much talk
about Comedie-Fran^aise and Sarah Bernhardt.

" July 8, 1883.— Breakfast at W.'s. Lord Houghton, Oscar
Wilde, Mrs. Singleton, Mrs. Moncrieff, Mrs. Gerald Potter, Lady
Archie Campbell, the Storeys, Theodore Watts, and some others.
Mrs. Moncrieff sang well afterwards. Lord Houghton asked me
about my father's memoirs. Margie sat by him."

The breakfasts remain ** charming " in Mrs. Moncrieff's
memory. And " charming " is Lady Colin Campbell's
word ; the charm in the blue and white, the old silver, the
distinctive little touch Whistler gave to everything. Lady
Wolseley writes us that she remembers " a flight of fans
fastened up on the walls, and also that the table had a large
flat blue China bowl, or dish, with gold-fish and nasturtiums
in it." Mrs. Alan S. Cole recalls a single tall lily springing
from the bowl ; though invited for twelve, it was wiser, she
adds, not to arrive much before two, for to get there earlier
was often to hear Whistler splashing in his bath somewhere
close to the drawing-room. This was Mr. W. J. Rawlinson's
experience once. He had been asked for twelve, he says, and
he got there a few minutes before as he would for a breakfast
in Paris. Several guests had already come, others followed,
a dozen perhaps ; one was Lord Wolseley. For Whistler
alone, they waited — and they waited and they waited. At
about half -past one, while they were still waiting, they heard
a splashing behind the folding-doors. There was a moment
of indignation. Then Howell hurried in, beaming on them.
" It's all right, it's all right ! " he said, " Jimmie won't be
1874-] 191

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

long now — he is just having his bath ! " Howell talked,
and they waited, and two struck before Whistler appeared,
smiling, gracious, all in white, for it was hot, and they went
down to breakfast. As soon as he came in, he was so
fascinating that the waiting was forgotten.

Sir Rennell Rodd writes us of the breakfasts at 13 Tite
Street :

" with the inevitable buckwheat cakes, and green corn, and
brilliant talk. One I remember particularly, for we happened

to be thirteen. There were two Miss C s present, the youngest

of whom died within a week of the breakfast, and an elderly
gentleman, whose name I forget, who was there also, when he
heard of it at his club, said, * God bless my soul,' and had a
stroke and died also."

J. was once only at one of the Chelsea breakfasts, in 1884,
at Tite Street, when Mr. Menpes was present. But we
often breakfasted in Paris, at the Rue du Bac, and in London,
at the Fitzroy Street studio. It made no difference who
was there, who sat beside you, Whistler dominated every-
body and everything, and this was the case not only in his
own, but in any and every house where he went. It was
one of the many extraordinary things about him that,
though short and small, a man of diminutive size the usual
description, his was invariably the most commanding presence
in a room. When he talked every one listened. At his
own table, he had a delightful way of waiting himself upon
his guests. He would go round the table with a bottle of
some special Burgundy in its cradle, talking all the while,
emphasising every point in his talk with a dramatic pause
just before or just after filling a glass. We remember one
Sunday in Paris, in 1893, Mr. and Mrs. Edwin A. Abbey and
Mr. D. S. MacColl the other guests, when he told how he
hung the pictures at the annual Liverpool exhibition in 1891 :

" You know, the Academy baby by the dozen had been sent

in, and I got them all in my gallery — and in the centre, at one

192 [1874-

LADY HADEN

THE OPEN DOOR

end, I placed the birth of the baby — splendid — and opposite,
the baby with the mustard-pot, and opposite that the baby with
the puppy — and in the centre, on one side, the baby ill, doctor
holding its pulse, mother weeping. On the other, by the door,
the baby dead — the baby's funeral — baby from the cradle to
the grave — baby in heaven — babies of all kinds and shapes all
along the line, not crowded, you know, hung with proper respect
for the baby. And on varnishing day, in came the artists —
each making for his own baby — amazing ! his baby on the line
— nothing could be better ! And they all shook my hand, and
thanked me — and went to look — at the other men's babies — and
then they saw babies in front of them, babies behind them, babies
to right of them, babies to left of them. And then — you know
— their faces fell — they didn't seem to like it — and — well — ha !
ha ! they never asked me to hang the pictures again at Liverpool !
What ! "

As he told it, he was on his feet, pouring out his Burgundy,
minutes sometimes to fill a single glass. There were intervals
between one guest and the next ; he seemed never to be in
his chair ; it was fully two hours before the story and break-
fast came to an end together. But though no one else
had a chance to talk, no one was bored. It was the same
wherever he went, if the people were sympathetic. If they
were not, he could be as grim as anybody, especially if he
was expected to " show off " ; or, he could go fast asleep.
In sympathetic houses, he not only led the talk, but controlled
it. There is a legend that he and Mark Twain met for
the first time at a dinner, when they simultaneously asked
their hostess who that very noisy fellow was ? For there
was noise, there was gaiety, and everybody was carried
away by it, even the servants.

Whistler was the artist in his use of words and phrases,
by their effective repetition making them as inseparable a
part of his personality as the white lock and the eyeglass.
His sudden " what," his familiar " well, you know," his
eloquent " H'm ! h'm ! " were placed as carefully as the
1874-] i : N 193

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Butterfly on his card of invitation, the blue and white on
the table. No man was ever so eloquent with his hands,
the fingers long, thin, sensitive — " alive to the tips, like the
fingers of a mesmerist," Mr. Arthur Symons writes of them.
No man ever put so much into words as he into the pause
for the laugh, into the laugh itself, the loud, sharp " Ha
ha ! " from which so many learned to shrink, and into the
deliberate adjusting of his eye-glass. So much was in his
manner, that it is almost impossible to give an idea of his talk
to those who never heard it. We have listened to him with
wonder and delight, and then gone away and tried to remember
what he said, to find it fall flat and lifeless without the play of
his expressive hands, without the malice or the music of his
laugh. This is why the stories of him in print often make
people marvel at the reputation they have brought him. Not
that the talk in itself was not good ; it was. His wit was
quick, spontaneous. " Providence is very good to me some-
times," he said once when we asked him how he found an
answer. He has been compared to Degas, who, it is said,
will lead up the talk to a witticism prepared beforehand ;
Whistler's wit met like a flash the word or the challenge he
could not have anticipated. And he loved to tell a story,
making more of the best than any other man. He loved
gossip, and treated it with a delicacy, a humour that was
irresistible. He could be fantastic, malicious, audacious,
serious, everything but dull or gross. He shrank from
grossness. No one, not his worst enemies, can recall a story
from him with a touch or taint of it. The ugly, the unclean,
revolted him.

We have heard of Sundays when Whistler sketched the
people who were there, hanging these sketches at times in
his dining-room. One Sunday he made the dry-point of
Lord (then Sir Garnet) Wolseley. Lord Wolseley himself
has forgotten it : "I fear beyond the recollection of an agree-
194 [1874-

THE OPEN DOOR

able luncheon at his house at Chelsea, I have no reminiscence/*
he wrote to us. And Lady Wolseley thinks " Lord Wolseley
may have gone to him for sittings early, and have breakfasted
with him. I have a vague impression." But Howell,
helpful as well as charming, was summoned that Sunday from
Putney to amuse the sitter and prevent his hurrying off,
and he put the date in his diary :

"November 24, 1877.— Went to Whistler's, met Sir Garnet
Wolseley. Whistler etched him — got two first proofs, second
one touched, 42s. Met Pellegrini and Godwin."

Whistler not only entertained, but also went everywhere,
and knew everybody, though he did not allow everybody to
know him. When somebody said to him, " The Prince of
Wales says he knows you," Whistler's answer was, " That's
only his side." He lived at a rate that would have killed
most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous.
" I never dined alone for years," he said. If no one was
coming to him, if no one had invited him, he dined at a club
or a restaurant. He was a familiar figure, at different
periods, in the Arts and Hogarth Clubs, the Arundel, the
Beaufort Grill Club in Dover Street, or, for supper, at the
Beefsteak Club. Many of his letters, for a period, were dated
from " The Fielding " in King Street, Covent Garden. He
was once put up at the Savile Club, he told us, but heard no
more about it, and at the Savage, but that, he said, ** is a club
to belong to, never to go to." At the Reform Club, had he
thought of it, he lost all chances of election one night when
his laugh woke up the old gentlemen, whose snores were
equally loud, in the reading-room. In the Lindsey Row days
he went often to a cheap French restaurant, " good of its
kind," with Albert Moore and Homer Martin, a man he
delighted in. Many artists dined there, he said, and would
sit and talk until late in the evening :

" But then, you know, the sort of Englishman who is entirely
1874-] J95

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

outside all these things, and likes to think he is * in it,' began to
come too, and that ruined it."

To Pagani's in Great Portland Street, a tiny place then,
he also went with Pellegrini and other friends. He was
most often seen at the Cafe Royal, in the 'eighties, when
he dined there with Oscar Wilde, and, towards the end,
when Mr. Heinemann, Mr. E. G. Kennedy, and ourselves
were most often with him, and when, if he ordered the
dinner, you might be sure that Poulet en Casserole would be
the principal dish, and sweet champagne the wine. Never
shall we forget a dinner at the Cafe Royal, in 1899, to Mr.
Freer, who had just bought a picture. We were the other
guests, with Mr. Heinemann. Much as Whistler wished
to be amiable to Mr. Freer, he was very tired, and, somehow,
the dinner was not quite right, and there were scenes in our
little corner behind the screen. Mr. Freer felt it necessary
to entertain the party, which he did by talking pictures, like
a " new critic," and Japanese prints, like a cultured school-
ma'am. Whistler slept peacefully through it all, and we
tried to be attentive, until at length, at some psychological
moment in Hiroshige's life or in Mr. Freer's collection,
Whistler snored such a tremendous snore that he woke
himself up, crying : " Good Heavens ! Who is snoring ? "

Whistler had the great fault of being late when invited
to dinner. One evening, an official evening, he arrived an
hour late. " We are so hungry, Mr. Whistler ! " said his host.
" What a good sign ! " was his answer. At times he felt
" like a little devil," and he told us of one of those occasions :

" I arrived. In the middle of the drawing-room table was
the new Fortnightly Review, wet from the press ; in it an article
on Meryon by Wedmore, and there was Wedmore — the distin-
guished guest. I felt the excitement over the great man, and
the great things he had been doing. Wedmore took the hostess
in to dinner ; I was on her other side, seeing things, bent on
196 [1874-

THE OPEN DOOR

making the most of them. And I talked — of critics, of Wedmore,
as though I did not know who sat opposite. And I was nudged,
my foot kicked under the table. But I talked. And whenever
the conversation turned on M6ryon, or Wedmore's article, or
other serious things, I told another story, and I laughed — ha !
ha ! — and they couldn't help it, they all laughed with me, and
Wedmore was forgotten, and I was the hero of the evening. And
Wedmore has never forgiven me."

Whistler went a great deal to the theatre in the 'seventies
and 'eighties, and was always seen at first nights. Occasion-
ally, in the 'seventies, as in the 'sixties, he acted in amateur
theatricals. He and Mr. Cole, in 1876, played in Under
the Umbrella, in Kensington Town Hall, and Whistler was
'* elated " by a paragraph on his performance in the Daily
News. He showed himself at private views, and at all the
ceremonies society approves. To see and be seen was part
of the social game, and the world, meeting him everywhere,
mistook him for the Butterfly for which he seemed to pose.

1874-] 197

CHAPTER XVI. THE PEACOCK ROOM.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-FOUR
TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN

FOR a year after Whistler's exhibition in Pall Mall, his
pictures were seen nowhere but in his studio. A
feeling prevailed among artists that his painting was not
serious, because not finished as they understood finish.
Whistler retorted that theirs " might be finished, but — well —
it never had been begun." This was not the way to curry
favour -with selecting committees. Probably Royal Aca-
demicians were honest, though they were malicious. Lord
Redesdale remembers one whose work now is discredited,
who used to say that Whistler was losing his eyesight, that
he could not see there was no paint on his canvas. Mr.
G. A. Holmes has told us that a few artists in Chelsea, though
they disliked him personally, thought he was a man with
new ideas, character, originality, one who threw new light
on art ; Henry Moore said to Mr. Holmes that Whistler put
more atmosphere into his pictures than any man living.
But Academicians, as a rule, were afraid of him, so much so
that Whistler would say to Mr. Holmes : " Well, you know,
they want to treat me like a sheet of note-paper, and crumple
me up ! "

His prints at this time appeared in exhibitions, because
many were in the fine collection of etchings which Mr. Ander-
son lent to the Liverpool Art Club in October 1874, and a few
months afterwards to the Hartley Institution at Southampton.
Shortly before the Liverpool show opened, Mr. Ralph Thomas'

108 [1874

THE PEACOCK ROOM

Catalogue, the first of Whistler's etchings, was privately
published by John Russell Smith of Soho Square. Of the
fifty copies printed, only twenty-five were for sale, so that
it became at once rare. Mr. Percy Thomas etched Whistler's
portrait of himself (Mr. McCullough's) for the frontispiece,
Mr. Ralph Thomas, who described the plates, had been with
Whistler when many were made and printed, and it must
always be regretted that Mr. Wedmore did not retain his
titles. In 1875, Whistler again exhibited pictures in the
few galleries that found a place for him when the Academy
could not. In October he sent to the Winter Exhibition
at the Dudley Gallery a Nocturne in Blue and Gold, No. III.,
which the name makes difficult to identify, and Nocturne in
Black and Gold — The Fatting Rocket, which Ruskin, presently
was to identify beyond the possibility of doubt : the im-
pression of fireworks that filled the night with beauty for
Whistler in the gardens of Cremorne. At the Dudley, it
created no sensation. F. G. Stephens, in the Athenceum, was
almost alone in his praise. A month later, November 1875,
Chelsea Reach — Harmony in Grey, and many studies of figures
on brown paper were at the Winter Exhibition of the Society
of French Artists, and three Nocturnes in the Spring
Exhibition (1876) of the same Society. Thus Whistler
managed without the Royal Academy.

In the studio there were new portraits. When Irving
appeared as Philip II. in 1874, Whistler was struck with
the tall, slim, romantic figure in silvery greys and blacks,
and got Irving to pose. Mr. Bernhard Sickert thinks it
extraordinary that Whistler failed to suggest Irving's char-
acter. We think it more extraordinary for Mr. Sickert to
be unaware that Whistler was painting Irving made up as
Philip II. and not as Henry Irving. When Mr. Alan S. Cole
saw the picture at the studio, on May 5, 1876, he found
Whistler " quite madly enthusiastic about his power of
1876] 199

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

painting such full-lengths in two sittings or so." The re-
production in M. Duret's Whistler differs in so many details
from the picture as it is, that we wondered if two portraits
were painted. M. Duret tells us that his reproduction is
from a photograph lent him by Mr. George Lucas, to whom
Whistler gave it. Probably, M. Duret writes, the photograph
was taken while Whistler was painting the picture, and
afterwards, in working, he altered it. On comparing the
photograph to the picture, we do not think there were
two portraits, but there are many changes. In the photo-
graph, the cloak is thrown back over the actor's right shoulder,
showing his arm. In the exhibited picture, his arm is hidden
by the cloak and his hand, which before seems to have been
thrust into his doublet, now rests upon the collar of an order.
The trunks apparently were much altered, especially the
right, and the legs are far better drawn, the left foot being
entirely repainted. Though Whistler was acquiring more
certainty in putting in these big portraits at once, he was
becoming more and more exacting and made repeated changes.
The portrait was not a commission. It is said that Irving
refused the small price Whistler asked for it, but later, seeing
his legs sticking out from under a pile of canvases in a War-
dour Street shop, recognised them, and bought the picture
for ten guineas. Mr. Bram Stoker writes that, at the time
of the bankruptcy, Whistler sold it to Irving " for either
twenty or forty pounds — I forget which." The facts are
that Whistler sold the Irving to Howell, for " ten pounds and
a sealskin coat," Howell recorded in his diary, and that from
him it passed into the hands of Mr. Graves, the printseller
in Pall Mall, who sold it to Irving for one hundred pounds.
After Irving's death, it came up for sale at Christie's, and
fetched five thousand pounds, becoming the property of
Mr. Thomas of Philadelphia.

A portrait of Sir Henry Cole was begun this spring. Mr.
200 [1876

SKETCHES FOR THE PEACOCK KOOM

THE PEACOCK ROOM

Alan S. Cole, in his diary (May 19, 1876) speaks of " a strong
commencement upon a nearly life-size portrait of my father.
Looking at it reflected in glass, and how the figure stood
within the frame." This was never finished. Whistler's
executrix says it was burned.

Lord Redesdale tells us of a beautiful full-length of his
wife in draperies of Chinese blue silk Whistler called " fair,"
which was his word then for everything he liked. With two
or three more sittings, and a little work, it would have been
finished. But it was a difficult moment, men were in posses-
sion at No. 2 Lindsey Row, and, rather than risk its falling
into their hands, he slashed the canvas to pieces. The debt
was small, some thirty pounds or so, and the price agreed
upon for the portrait was two hundred guineas. Lord
Redesdale or any other friend, would gladly have settled
the matter, but Whistler said nothing. A portrait started
of Lord Redesdale, in Van Dyck costume, and several Noc-
turnes went, he says, the same way. The Fur Jacket, Rosa
Corder, Connie Gilchrist with the Skipping Rope — The Gold Girl,
Effie Deans, were also painted, or at least begun. The Fur
Jacket, Arrangement in Black and Brown his final name for
it in the exhibition at Goupil's in 1892, is the portrait of
" Maud," Miss Franklin, who, from now on, becomes more
important in his life and in his art. It is one of great dignity.
The dress is put in with a full sweeping brush in long flowing
lines, almost classic in the fall of its folds ; the pale beautiful
face looks out, like a flower, from the depths of the back-
ground. In many portraits Whistler was rebuked for
sacrificing the face to the design ; here, the interest is con-
centrated in the face, and that is why the " shadowy figure "
has been criticised as a mere ghost, a mere " rub-in of colour,"
on the canvas. That he had carried it as far as he thought
it should be carried to obtain his effect, is the more certain
when it is contrasted with Rosa Corder, also an Arrangement
1876] 201

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER.

in Black and Brown, in which the jacket, the feathered hat
held, drooping, in one hand, the trailing skirt, even the fine
face in its severe profile, are more solidly modelled. M.
Blanche, in an article on Whistler in the Renaissance Latine
(June 15, 1905), wrote that once Whistler, in Cheyne Walk,
saw Miss Rosa Corder, in her brown dress, pass a door painted
black, and was struck with the effect of colour. This may
be true, for, as we have shown, Whistler often got the first
idea of a pose, an arrangement, by mere chance. Connie
Gilchrist, the Gold Girl, at the moment the most popular
little dancer at the Gaiety, attracted Whistler by her stage
dress, which revealed her slight girlish form in its delicate,
youthful beauty. Whistler posed her in the studio as he had
seen her on the stage, in the act of skipping. But the move-
ment does not seem part of the decorative arrangement on
his canvas. It told on the stage by its simplicity, its spon-
taneity, but it becomes in the picture theatrical, artificial.
The figure has the elegance of the little pastels, it is placed
with the distinction of the Miss Alexander, but the suspended
action gives the sense of incompleteness which his critics
were so unnecessarily conscious of in his technique. A long
line swept down the outline of the figure shows that he meant
to change it. The pose and the movement haunted him.
Often, in friends' houses, he would make little sketches of
pictures he was working on, and one evening he left with Mr.
Cole sketches both of the Connie Gilchrist and the Rosa Corder
done in this way.

Not one of these portraits was shown in 1876, for other
work gradually engrossed him to the exclusion of everything
else. It was the year of the Peacock Room.

He first proposed the scheme to Mr. W. C. Alexander,
when he designed the decorations for the house on Campden
Hill, and he put down a few notes in pen and ink. But the
work went no further, and he arranged, instead, a harmony in

202 [1876

THE PEACOCK ROOM

white for the drawing-room, replaced afterwards by an
arrangement of Eastern tapestries. The scheme was still
a suggestion on note-paper, when Mr. Leyland bought
his house in Prince's Gate. Leyland's ambition, it is said,
was to live the life of an ancient Venetian merchant in
modern London, and he began to remodel the interior and
to "fill it with beautiful things." He bought the gilded
staircase from Northumberland House, recently pulled
down to make way for Northumberland Avenue. He got
Whistler to design the colour in the hall, and paint the
detail of blossom and leaf in some of the panels of the dado.
44 To Leyland's house to see Whistler's colouring of Hall —
very delicate cocoa-colour and gold — successful," Mr. Cole
wrote in his diary on March 24. Leyland covered the walls
of drawing- and reception-rooms with pictures, his instinctive
preference for the best guiding him in their selection. He
had fine works by Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Crivelli. He
owned, among other things, Rossetti's Blessed Damosel and
Lady Lilith, Millais' Eve of St. Agnes, Ford Madox Brown's
Chaucer at King Edward's Court, Windus' Burd Helen, Burne-
Jones' Mirror of Venus and Wine of Circe. He bought work
by Legros, Watts and Albert Moore. Whistler's Princesse
du Pays de la Porcelaine was already his, and he hung it in his
dining-room with his splendid collection of blue and white.

Mr. Norman Shaw was making the alterations in the house
for Leyland, and another architect, Jeckyll, was suggested
by Mr. Murray Marks for the decoration of the dining-room
and the arrangement of the blue and white. Some say the
original scheme was that Morris and Burne-Jones should
decorate and furnish the dining-room, though when Whistler
stepped in, they vanished. The commission was certainly
given to Jeckyll, and he put up a series of walnut shelves
to hold the china. Whistler designed the side-board. A
space was left over the mantel for the Princesse and another
1876] 203

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER •

at the opposite end of the room, for paintings by Burne-Jones
and Whistler, who wished the Three Figures, Pink and
Grey to hang there and face the Princesse. The walls were
hung with Norwich leather. The shelves were divided by
rigid perpendicular lines endlessly repeated, and the panelled
ceiling, with its pendant lamps, was heavy and oppressive.
Whistler objected that the red border of the rug, and the
red flowers in the centre of each panel of the leather, which
was painted, not embossed, killed the delicate tones of his
picture. Leyland agreed with him. The red border was
cut off the rug, and Whistler gilded, or painted, the flowers
on the leather with yellow and gold. The result he pro-
nounced horrible ; the yellow paint and gilding " swore "
at the yellow tone of the leather. Something else must be
done, and again Leyland agreed. The something else
developed into the scheme of decoration first submitted to
Mr. Alexander : the Peacock Room.

He told us one evening, when talking of it :

" Well, you know, I just painted as I went on, without design
or sketch — it grew as I painted. And towards the end I reached
such a point of perfection — putting in every touch with such
freedom — that when I came round to the corner where I had
started, why, I had to paint part of it over again, or the difference
would have been too marked. And the harmony in blue and
gold developing, you know, I forgot everything in my joy in it ! "

He had planned a journey to Venice, and new series of
etchings to be made there and in France and Holland. The
journey was postponed. At the end of the season, the
Leylands went to Speke Hall. Whistler remained at Prince's
Gate. Town emptied, and he was still there, spending his
days on ladders and scaffolding, lying in a hammock, painting
with a brush fastened to a fishing-rod. His two pupils
helped him : " We laid on the gold," Mr. Walter Greaves
says, and there were times when the three were found with
204 [1876

THE PEACOCK ROOM

their hair and faces covered with gold. Whistler's description
of this whirlwind of work was " the show's afire," an expression
he used for years when things were " going." He was up
every morning before six, and at Prince's Gate an hour or so
after ; at noon, jumping into a hansom and driving home to
lunch ; then hurrying back to his work. At night, he was
fit for nothing but bed, " so full were my eyes of sleep and
peacock feathers," he told us. He thought only of the
beauty springing up beneath his hands. Autumn set in.
Lionel Robinson and Sir Thomas Sutherland, the friends
with whom he was to have gone to Venice, at last started
without him. He could not drop the work at Prince's Gate.
A record of his progress is contained in the short, concise
notes of Mr. Alan S. Cole's diary :

"September 11, 1876. — Whistler dined. Most entertaining
with his brilliant description of his successful decorations at
Leyland's.

" September 20. — To see Peacock Room. Peacock feather
devices — blues and golds — extremely new and original.

" October 26. — To see room, which is developing. The dado
and panels greatly help it. Met Poynter, who spoke highly of
Whistler's decoration.

" October 27. — Again to see room with Moody. He did not
like the varnished surface and blocky manner of laying on the
gold.

" October 29. — To Peacock Room. Mitford [Lord Redesdale]
came.

" November 10. — The blue over the brown (leather) background
is most admirable in effect, and the ornament in gold on blue
fine. W. quite mad with excitement.

" November 20. — With Prince Teck to see Whistler and the
Room. Left P. T. with Jimmy.

" November 29. — Golden Peacocks promise to be superb.

" December 4. — Peacocks superb.

" December 8. — Article in Morning Post on Peacock Room.

" December 9. — Whistler in a state over article in Morning
Post. Leyland much perturbed as I heard. /

1876] 205

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

" December 15. — Whistler now thinking of cutting off the
pendant ceiling lamps in Peacock Room.

" December 17. — My father and Probyn to see room. Jimmy
much disgusted at my father's telling him that, in taking so
much pains over his work, and in the minuteness of his etched
work, he really was like Mulready, who was equally scrupulous."

Lord Redesdale tells us that he had just returned from
Scotland, and had seen nothing of the long summer's work.
When he went to Prince's Gate Whistler was on top of a
ladder, looking like a little evil imp, a gnome.

" But what are you doing ? "

" I am doing the loveliest thing you ever saw ! "

" But what of the beautiful old Spanish leather ? And Ley-
land ? Have you consulted him ? "

" Why should I ? I am doing the most beautiful thing
that ever has been done, you know — the most beautiful
room ! "

Everybody hurried to look at it, and Whistler began to
hold a succession of informal receptions at Prince's Gate. He
was pleased when people like the Princess Louise and the
Marquis of Westminster came, he wrote to his mother at
Hastings, for they set the fashion, kept up the talk in London.
Boughton said in his Reminiscences :

" He often asked me round to the Peacock Room, and I see
him still up on high, lying on his back often, working in ' gold
on blue ' and * blue on gold ' over the whole expanse of the
ceiling — and as far as I could see he let no hand touch it but
his own."

Mrs. Stillman, however, remembers the two pupils working
hard, while she drank tea with Whistler. Mrs. Richmond
Ritchie has let us have her impressions of her visit :

" Long, long after the Paris days, Mr. Whistler danced when

I would rather have talked. Some one, I cannot remember

who, it was probably one of Mr. Cole's family, told me one day

when I was walking up Prince's Gate, that he was decorating a

206 [1876

THE PEACOCK ROOM

house by which we were passing — and asked me if I should like
to go in. We found ourselves, it was like a dream, in a beautiful
Peacock Room, full of lovely lights and tints, and romantic,
dazzling effects. James Whistler, in a painter's smock, stood
at one end of the room at work. Seeing us, he laid down his
mahl-stick and brush, and greeted us Avarmly, and I talked of
old Paris days to him. * I used to ask you to dance,' he said,
' but you liked talking best,' to which I answered, ' No, indeed,
I liked dancing best ' — and suddenly I found myself whirling
half-way down the room."

Jeckyll also came, and his visit had a tragic end. When
he saw what had been done with his work, he hurried home,
gilded his floor, and forgot his grief in a mad-house.

Whistler received the critics on February 9, 1877. " Called
and found Whistler elated with the praises of the press of the
Peacock Room," is Mr. Cole's note on the 18th of the month.
Even then it was not finished. On March 5, Mr. Cole was
" late at Prince's Gate with Whistler, consoling him. He
trying to finish the peacocks on shutters — with him till
2 A.M., and walked home."

Whistler made no change in the architectural construction
of the room. It was far from beautiful, with its repeated
lines, its heavy ceiling, its hanging lamps, and its spaces so
broken up that, only on the wall opposite the Princesse and
on the shutters, could he carry out his design in its full
splendour and stateliness, and give gorgeousness of form
as well as colour : only there could he paint the peacocks
that were his motive, so that it is by artificial light, with the
shutters closed, that the room is seen in completeness. He
could do no more than adapt in the most marvellous fashion
the eye of the peacock, the throat and breast feathers to
the broken surfaces. But in spite of all the drawbacks, the
Peacock Room is the " noble work " he called it to his
mother, the one perfect mural decoration of modern times.
It was his first chance, and it will be a lasting reproach to
1877] 207

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

his contemporaries that there was no one to offer him another
until it was too late.

A little leaflet, for distribution among the critics, was
written, it is said, by Whistler, though the wording does
not suggest it, and printed by Mr. Thomas Way. We have
seen only one copy, Lady Haden's. It explains that, with
the Peacocks as motive, two patterns, derived from the
eyes and the breast feathers, were invented and repeated
throughout, sometimes one alone, sometimes both in com-
bination ; along the dado, blue on gold, over the walls gold on
blue ; while the arrangement was completed by the birds,
painted in all their splendour, in blue on the gold shutters,
in gold on the blue space opposite the chimney place.

Whistler, who, in his pictures, avoided literary themes,
resorted to symbolism in his gold peacocks on the wall facing
the Princesse. One, standing amid flying feathers and gold,
clutches in his claws a pile of coins ; the other bristles and
spreads his wings in angry but triumphant defiance : " the
Rich Peacock and the Poor Peacock," Whistler said, sym-
bolising the relations between patron and artist.

Leyland had been kept out of his house in Prince's Gate
for months. He had seen his beautiful old leather disappear
beneath Whistler's blue and gold. He had heard of recep-
tions and press views in his house for which no invitations
had been issued by him or to him, and he was annoyed at
having his house turned into a public gallery. The crisis
came when Whistler, thinking himself justified by months
of work, asked two thousand guineas for the decoration of
the room, as a reasonable price. Leyland, who had sanc-
tioned only the re-touching of the leather, could restrain
himself no longer. Like many generous men, he had a strict,
if narrow, sense of justice. The original understanding was
that Whistler should receive five hundred guineas. This
grew to a thousand as the scheme developed. Leyland
208 [1877

THE PEACOCK ROOM

agreed. But when, at the end, Whistler demanded two
thousand, and there was no contract, Leyland sent Whistler
one thousand pounds, not even making them guineas. To
Whistler, this was an insult. He felt he had been treated,
not as an artist, but as a tradesman, and the years of friend-
ship counted for nothing. He never forgave Leyland, though
it seems that, at one moment, Leyland was prepared to pay
the sum asked, if Whistler would leave the house. Whistler
refused, preferring to make Leyland a gift of the decoration
than not finish the panel of the Peacocks.

" You know — there Leyland will sit at dinner — his back to
the Princesse, and always before him the apotheosis of Vart et
I'argent ! "

And this was what happened. Leyland knew that, in return
for the loss of his leather and his irritation with Whistler,
he had been given something beautiful, and he kept the
dining-room as Whistler left it, toning down not a flying
feather, not a piece of gold in that triumphant caricature.
Until the colour fades from the panel, the world cannot
forget the quarrel. Whistler himself never forgot it, and
his resentment against Leyland never lessened. It may be
that he was over-sensitive, certainly he put himself in the
wrong by his conduct to Leyland. But he could no more
help his manner of avenging what he thought an insult, than
the meek man can refrain from turning the other cheek to
the chastiser. It will ever be to Leyland's credit that he
left the work intact, and sat there, and admired it un-
grudgingly.

1877] i : o 209

CHAPTER XVII. THE GROSVENOR
GALLERY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
SEVENTY-SEVEN TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-
EIGHT.

MANY exhibitions had been organised in opposition to
the Royal Academy, but on too insignificant a scale
to contend against a rich and powerful institution. Sir Coutts
Lindsay, the founder of the Grosvenor Gallery, brought to
the new enterprise, money, a talent for organisation, and a
determination to show the best work in the most beautiful
manner possible. Nothing could have been more in accord
with Whistler's ideas. He dropped in to smoke with Mr.
Alan S. Cole on the evening of March 19, 1876, when, Mr.
Cole writes, he " was in great excitement over Sir Coutts
Lindsay's gallery for pictures — very select exhibition, which
he carried to an extreme by saying that it might be opened
with only one picture worthy of being shown that season."
The Grosvenor never reached any such height of disinterested-
ness. Sir Coutts Lindsay proposed to maintain his standard
by exhibiting no pictures except those invited by himself,
and he might have succeeded had he had the strength to
ignore the Academy, and make the Grosvenor as distinct
from it as was the International Society of Sculptors, Painters,
and Gravers under Whistler's presidency. He had, what
then seemed, the daring to invite Whistler, Rossetti, Burne-
Jones, Holman Hunt, Walter Crane ; but he could not venture
to leave out Watts, Millais, Alma-Tadema, Poynter. " To
those whose work he specially wanted, he gave little dinners,"
210 [1877

THE GROSVENOR GALLERY

Mr. Hall£ has told us, and a very strange lot some of them
seemed. The butler felt this even more. He stood them
all, until one evening he could endure it no longer, and he
came in the drawing-room, where they were, and whispered :
" There's a gent downstairs says he has come to dinner,
wot's forgot his necktie and stuck a feather in his 'air," for
at this period, Whistler, Mr. Halle says, never wore a necktie
when in evening dress. The white lock bewildered many.
Mrs. Leyland remembers his going with her to her box at the
opera once, where the attendant leaned over and said : " Beg
your pardon, sir, but there's a white feather in your hair,
just on top ! "

At first, Burne-Jones and the followers of the Pre-
Raphaelites were most in evidence at Sir Coutts Lindsay's
exhibitions, and the " greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery,"
element, parodied by Gilbert and Sullivan, and so many
others, prevailed. But the Grosvenor, by the time its
traditions were taken over by the New Gallery, had dwindled
into little more than an overflow from the Academy.

Shortly before the first exhibition in 1877, Whistler's
brother, the Doctor, was married to Miss Helen lonides, a
cousin of his old friends, Aleco and Luke lonides. The
wedding (April 17, 1877) was at St. George's, Hanover Square,
and the Greek Church, London Wall. It brought to Whistler
a good friend for the troubled years that were to come, and
Mrs. Whistler's house in Wimpole Street was for long a
home to him.

The first Grosvenor was a loan exhibition, and opened in
May 1877. Whistler lent Nocturne in Black and Gold — The
Falling Rocket, hung the year before at the Dudley ; Harmony
in Amber and Black, the first title of The Fur Jacket; Arrange-
ment in Brown ; Irving as Philip II. of Spain, with the title
Arrangement in Black, No. III. From Mrs. Leyland came
Nocturne in Blue and Silver, the river and Battersea seen
1877] 211

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

from the windows of Lindsey Row ; from Mr. W. Graham,
another Nocturne in Blue and Silver — changed later by
Whistler to Blue and Gold — Old Battersea Bridge, now at the
Tate Gallery ; from the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham, Noc-
turne in Blue and Gold, at Westminster. The Carlyle was
shown, though it arrived too late to be catalogued. To this
exhibition, Boehm sent his bust of Whistler in terra-cotta,
done in 1872, considered at the time an extremely good
portrait.

Whistler's work was also seen in a frieze, described by
Mr. Walter Crane :

" Whistler designed the frieze — the phases of the moon, on
the coved ceiling of the West Gallery, which has disappeared
since its conversion into the vEolian Hall, with stars on a sub-
dued blue ground, the moon and stars being brought out in
silver, the frieze being divided into panels by the supports of the
glass roof. The ' phases ' were sufficiently separated from
each other."

We have heard of this decoration from no one else. Prob-
ably it was overshadowed by the gorgeousness of the
crimson silk damask and green velvet hangings, the gilded
pilasters and furniture, the monumental fireplace, of which
complaint was heard from every side. The sumptuousness
of Sir Coutts Lindsay's background was disastrous to the
pictures. Whistler's suffered less than others, but were not
liked the more on that account. Before the private view
(April 30, 1877), Sir Coutts Lindsay had expressed his dis-
appointment in the Irving and the Nocturnes. The crowd
gathered in front of Alma-Tadema's Bath ; Burne-Jones'
Days of Creation ; Watts' Love and Death ; Millais' portraits ;
Holman Hunt's Afterglow — in front of Leighton, Poynter,
Richmond, Walter Crane, Albert Moore. The critics sneered
at Whistler, or patronised him, as usual. The Athenaeum
seemed to grudge its meagre lines to this " whimsical, if

212 [1877

THE GROSVENOR GALLERY

capable, artist and his vagaries." The Times smiled with
condescension at " Mr. Whistler's compartment musical
with strange Nocturnes," wondered how Irving enjoyed
" being reduced to a mere arrangement," and deplored the
theory that, in practice, covered

" an entire absence of details, even details generally considered
so important to a full-length portrait as arms and legs. In fact,
Mr. Whistler's full-length arrangements suggest to us a choice
between materialised spirits and figures in a London fog."

But nowhere was criticism so insolent, nowhere so brutal,
as in the notice of the Grosvenor which Ruskin delivered
from his circulating pulpit, Fors Clavigera (July 2, 1877).

Ruskin, though social subjects engrossed him more and
more, was still the art critic, all powerful to the public, and
to himself infallible. He had made the Pre-Raphaelites, he
set to work to unmake Whistler. Already Ruskin was
attacked by the mental malady, the " morbid excitement,"
in Mr. Collingwood's words, that obscured the last years of
his life ; he had been very ill in the winter of 1877. Nothing
else could pardon his malice and insolence. He looked at
The Falling Rocket, and was blind to the beauty and to the
mastery of the painter.

" I have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before
now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred
guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

Boughton, in his Reminiscences, tells that Whistler first
chanced upon this criticism when they were alone together
in the smoking-room at the Arts Club. "It is the most
debased style of criticism I have had thrown at me yet,"
Whistler said. " Sounds rather like libel," Boughton
suggested. " Well— that I shall try to find out ! " Whistler
replied.

Till now, his answer to abuse of his work had been the
1877] 213

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

lash of his wit. But if critics had tried him by their stupidity,
never, before Ruskin, had they outraged him by their venom.
The insult was made in a widely read print ; he therefore
sought redress in the most public fashion possible in England
and sued Ruskin for libel.

The immediate result was that he found it harder than
ever to sell his pictures. To buy his Nocturnes was to be
laughed at, Mr. Rawlinson, one of the few who risked it,
assures us. Whistler put away the new anxiety as he put
away all his troubles ; he laughed and he worked, and
devoted a great deal of time to black-and-white. The year
before he had announced his intention to take up etching
again. He had hoped, at last, to go to Venice, but the
preparations for the trial kept him in London. Howell
now made himself as useful to Whistler as he had been to
Rossetti, and the friendship between them became close
intimacy.

" Well, you know — it happened one summer evening in those
old days when there was real summer, I was sitting looking out
of the window in Lindsey Row, and there was Howell passing,
and Miss Rosa Corder was with him. And I called to them,
and they came in, and Howell said : ' Why, you have etched
many plates, haven't you ? You must get them out, you must
print them, you must let me see to them — there's gold waiting.
And you have a press ! ' And so I had, in a room upstairs, only
it was rusty, it hadn't been used for so long. But Howell wouldn't
listen to an objection. He said he would fix up the press, he
would pull it. And there was no escape. And the next morning,
there we all were, Miss Rosa Corder too, and Howrell was pulling
at the wrheel, and there were basins of water, and paper being
damped, and prints being dried, and then Howell was grinding
more ink, and, with the plates under my fingers, I felt all the
old love of it come back. In the afternoon Howell would go
and see Mr. Graves, the printseller, and there were orders flying
about, and cheques — it was all amazing, you know ! Howell
profited, of course. But he was so superb. One evening we
had left a pile of eleven prints just pulled, and the next morning
214 [1877

THE GROSVENOR GALLERY

only five were there. * It's very strange ! ' Howell said, ' we
must have a search. No one could have taken them but me,
and that, you know, is impossible ! ' "

New plates, Free Trade Wharf, Putney Bridge and The
Little Putney were published by the Fine Art Society. St.
James's Street was reproduced by lithography in the " Season
Number " of Vanity Fair, 1878, and the Athenceum objected
to it because it was " not done as Leech or Hogarth would have
done it," and the World mistook the reproduction for the
original, and so invited from Whistler one of the letters now
following each other fast : " Atlas has the wisdom of ages,
and need not grieve himself with mere matters of art."
Adam and Eve, Old Chelsea has a special interest, for it marks
better than almost any plate, the transition from his early
manner in the Thames Set to the later handling in the Venetian.
A plate was made from the Irving as Philip of Spain, the
only one of his portraits that Whistler reproduced on copper,
and he did it very badly. His plates of " Joe " and " Maud "
were never done after finished pictures, but many were made
as studies for pictures he proposed to paint. The dry-point
of Whistler's Mother has no relation to the portrait. He
was bored to death with copying himself, he would say, and,
twenty years afterwards, when he undertook to make a
lithograph of his Montesquiou, and failed, he said that " it
was impossible to produce the same masterpiece twice over,"
that " the inspiration would not come," that when he was
not working at a new thing from Nature, he was not applying
himself, " it was as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg
twice."

In 1878 he made his first experiments in lithography.
His attention had been called to it by Mr. Thomas Way,
who did more than any other man to revive the art in England.
Lithography, appropriated by commerce, was almost for-
gotten as a means of artistic expression. In France, it was
1878] 215

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

given over for cheaper and quicker methods of illustration,
and in England it was overweighted by the ponderous
performances of Haghe and Nash, and hedged about by
trade-unions, reduced to the perfection of commonplace.
Lithographers here and there preserved its best traditions,
and regretted the degradation. Mr. Thomas Way deter-
mined to interest artists again in a medium that had yielded
such splendid results. He prepared stones for them, ex-
plained processes, and would not hear of difficulties. Some
artists experimented, but lithography did not pay, while the
anecdote in paint fetched a fortune. Mr. Way knew Whistler,
had printed the leaflet on the Peacock Room, and had bought
some of his work. And Mr. Way appealed to Whistler,
who tried the stone, grasped at once its possibilities, and was
delighted. In his first five lithographs he did things never
attempted before, and found the medium peculiarly adapted
to him. There were nine in all this year. They were drawn
on the stone, though most of the later ones were done on
lithographic paper. He proposed to publish these first
lithographs as Art Notes, but there was no demand, and the
plan fell through. The Toilet and The Broad Bridge were
printed in Piccadilly, edited by Mr. Watts-Dunton, and they
had hardly appeared when the magazine came to an end.
Neither Whistler nor lithography then meant success for
any enterprise.

In 1878, the Catalogue of Blue and White Nankin Porcelain
Forming the Collection of Sir Henry Thompson was published.
Mr. Murray Marks and Mr. W. C. Alexander own delicate
little studies of blue and white, designed by Whistler for
Mr. Marks, but never used. They were a good preparation
for the drawings which, in collaboration with Sir Henry
Thompson, he made to illustrate the Catalogue. Some were
in brown, some in blue, reproduced by the Autotype Company.
Nineteen out of the twenty-six are by Whistler. They are
216 [1878

SKETCHES FOR BLUE AND WHITE

THE GROSVENOR GALLERY

of the utmost simplicity and directness, and the modelling
is entirely in the drawing by the brush, exactly as the Japanese
would have done it. As a rule, there are neither shadows
nor any attempt at relief. The series is the complete refuta-
tion of the assertion that he could not draw. Whenever he
attempted drawings of this sort, or etchings like The Wine
Glass, he eclipsed Jacquemart, and, indeed, all his contem-
poraries. Worried, anxious, the libel case hanging over him,
his debts increasing, the general distrust in his work growing,
Whistler, nevertheless, gave to the catalogue his usual care.
We have seen another set of the drawings, which differ slightly
from those reproduced, and with which, evidently, he was
not satisfied. The book was edited by Mr. Murray Marks,
and issued by Messrs. Ellis and White of New Bond Street, in
May, and Mr. Marks exhibited the drawings and the porce-
lain, with the book, in his shop, 395 Oxford Street. The
show was not a success, the book was a loss, though only
two hundred and twenty copies were printed.

Of personal notice, Whistler now had more than enough.
He was caricatured this year in the farce of The Grasshopper
at the Gaiety — it was in the days of Edward Terry and Nellie
Farren ; he was caricatured in Vanity Fair by " Spy,"
Leslie Ward, then rapidly rivalling " Ape " in popularity ;
and to be so caricatured was, in London, to achieve notoriety.

To the second Grosvenor in 1878, he sent, in defiance of
Ruskin, another series of Nocturnes, Harmonies and Arrange-
ments. Among them was the Arrangement in White and
Black, No. /., the large full-length portrait of Miss Maud
Franklin, that sometimes figures in catalogues and articles
as ISAmericaine. We believe this picture was never shown
in England again. It passed in the early 'eighties into the
collection of Dr. Linde at Liibeck, where it remained until
1904, was then sold, through Paris dealers, to an American,
and remains one of the least known of Whistler's large full-
1878] 217

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

lengths. We saw it in the spring of 1904, when it hung for
a while in M. Duret's apartment in the Rue Vignon. It is
the only portrait, except the Connie Gilchrist and The Yellow
Buskin, in which Whistler attempted to give movement to
the figure. Miss Franklin wears a white gown in the ugly
fashion of the late 'seventies, and walks towards you, one
hand on her hip, the other holding up her skirt, the rhythm
and spring of the movement expressed in every line of the
body, every fold of the gown. But, because she comes
towards you, she fails to fulfil Whistler's own precept that
the figure must keep well within the frame. She seems
walking out of the dark depth of the background, breaking
through the envelope of atmosphere. The problem was
difficult, an unusual one for Whistler, and, interesting as is
the result, the portrait hardly ranks with the greatest. When
shown in 1878, it did not help to reconcile the critics. The
Athenceum said :

" Mr. Whistler is in great force. Last year some of his life-
size portraits were without feet ; here we have a curiously shaped
young lady, ostentatiously showing her foot, which is a pretty
large one."

It was a " vaporous full-length " in the opinion of the Times,
still babbling nonsense about the Nocturnes, and glad to turn
from Whistler's " diet of fog to the broad table of substantial
landscape spread for us by Cecil G. Lawson." Whistler
made a drawing of the Arrangement in White and Black for
Blackburn's Grosvenor Notes, an illustrated catalogue, pub-
lished for the first time in 1878. For many years, after
this, Whistler made these little sketches in pen and ink after
his pictures, for catalogues, and also for papers that illustrated
their notices of the exhibitions : an aid to the identification
of works where his titles failed.

218 [1878

CHAPTER XVIII. THE WHITE HOUSE.
THE YEAR EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT

TN the Paris International Exhibition of 1878, Whistler
J- showed the section of a room decorated by him, his only
exhibit. We never knew of this until after his death. It
may have been the design he wanted to carry out for Mr.
Alexander ; most likely, it was intended for the decoration
of the White House, which E. W. Godwin, the architect, was
building for him in Tite Street, Chelsea. The only reference
to it that we have found is in the American Architect and
Building News (July 27, 1878) :

" Ever since the Baltimore artist, Mr. Whistler, did the famous
Peacock Room for Mr. Leyland in Prince's Gate, he has had a
reputation as unique in upholstery as in higher walks of art. He
is building a house for himself in London ; like no other house,
of course ; meant, perhaps, as a protest against the sudden
popularity of Queen Anne fronts in red brick, with their balconies
and drawbridges. He calls this room a Harmony in Yellow and
Gold. Outside a yellow wall is built up a chimney-piece and
cabinet in one, of which the wood, like all the wood in the room,
is a curiously light yellow mahogany — something very different
from the flaming veneer known to the American for generations
past, with drunk and straddling patterns all over it. The fire-
place is flush with the front of the cabinet, the front panelled
in gilt bars below the shelf and cornice, inclosing tiles of pale
sulphur, above the shelf, a cupboard, with clear glass and tri-
angular open niches at either side, holding bits of Kaga porcelain,
chosen for the yellowishness of the red, which is a characteristic
of that ware ; the frame of the grate brass ; the rails in polished
steel ; the fender the same. Yellow on yellow, gold on gold,
everywhere. The peacock reappears, the eyes and the breast
1878] / 219

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

feathers of him, but whereas in Prince's gate it was always blue
on gold, or gold on blue, here the feather is all gold, boldly and
softly laid on a gold-tinted wall. The feet to the table-legs are
tipped with brass, and rest on a yellowish brown velvet rug.
Chairs and sofas are covered with yellow, pure rich yellow velvet,
darker in shade than the yellow of the wall, and edged with yellow
fringe. The framework of the sofa has a hint of the Japanese
influence, which faintly, but only faintly, suggests itself all
through the room. Its latticework back and wheel-patterned
ends might pass for bamboo ; the carpentry is as light as if the
long fingers of a saffron-faced artist had coaxed it into shape." *

Messrs. Obach had in their possession a set of glass panels
for a door, taken from the house of Mr. Anderson Rose,
which was stated to be by Whistler. But there is no evidence
of Whistler's work in it. The rooms of Mrs. William Whistler,
Mr. William Heinemann, Sefior Sarasate, Mrs. Walter Sickert,
Mrs. D'Oyly Carte, Mr. Menpes, and others were decorated
by him.- But trie decoration in all these houses was simply
a colour-scheme for the walls. Whistler mixed the colour,
which was usually put on by house painters. He suggested
frequently the furniture, but of design, as in the Peacock
Room, there was nothing, nor was there in any of his own
houses after the White House. He often gave, as in the case
of Mrs. Whistler, elaborate directions as to what colours
should be used, and how they were to be applied. Mrs.
D'Oyly Carte writes us :

" It would not be quite correct to say that Mr. Whistler designed
the decorations of my house, because it is one of the old Adam
houses in Adelphi Terrace, and it contained the original Adam
ceiling in the drawing-room and a number of the old Adam
mantelpieces, which Mr. Whistler much admired, as he did also
some of the cornices, doors and other things. What he did do
was to design a sort of colour-scheme for the house, and he mixed
the colours for distempering the walls himself in each case,

* Since writing the above, we have found a reference to this " Primrose Room "
in an article by Mrs. Phoebe Garnaut Smalley in The Lamp, for March 1904.
But she merely refers to its being in the Exhibition.
220 [1878

THE WHITE HOUSE

leaving only the painters to apply them. In this way he got
the exact shade he wanted, which made all the difference, as I
think the difficulty in getting any painting satisfactorily done
is that painters simply have their stock shades which they show
you to choose from, and none of them seem to be the kind of
shades that Mr. Whistler managed to achieve by the mixing of
his ingredients. He distempered the whole of the staircase walls
a very light pink colour ; the dining-room a different and deeper
shade ; the library he made one of those yellows he had in his
own drawing-room at the Vale, a sort of primrose which seemed
as if the sun was shining, however dark the day, and he painted
the woodwork with it green, but not like the ordinary painters'
green at all. He followed the same scheme in the other rooms.
His idea was to make the house ' gay ' and delicate in colour."

To decoration, Whistler applied his scientific method of
painting. In all his late work, there were harmonies pro-
duced by the mixing and arrangement of colour, and it is
to be noted that on his walls, as in his pictures, black was
often the basis of his most delicate tones. Colour, for him,
was as much decoration as pattern was for William Morris,
and in the use of simple colour for wall decoration, Whistler
has triumphed. In the painting of pictures, the idea of the
Pre-Raphaelites was decoration, that is, convention. Their
scheme of decoration was either wilfully or ignorantly founded
on the realism of the Middle Ages. The great decorators
of Italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except
in the case of the greatest, Piero della Francesca, is now
regarded as convention, and it is the Pre-Raphaelites who
stirred up these dead bones. In France, Puvis de Chavannes
carried on the traditions of Italy by means of modern sub-
jects and modern methods, though always there was the
convention of flatness and simplicity, quite right in mural
decoration. Whistler's belief was that a portrait, or a Noc-
turne, should be as decorative as a conventional design, that,
by the spacing of his figures or subjects on the canvas, and
by their colour, they should be made decorative, and not by

1878] / 221

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

conventional arrangement and conventional lines. He also
believed that walls should be in flat tones and not covered
with design. Pictures then placed upon them were shown
properly, and did not struggle with any pattern. Lady
Archibald Campbell writes us a few lines that prove how
thoroughly he made people understand his aims when they
were willing to learn from him :

" The fundamental principles of decorative art with which
Whistler impressed me, related to the necessity of applying
scientific methods to the treatment of all decorative work ; that
to produce harmonious effects in line and ' colour-grouping,'
the whole plan or scheme should have to be thoroughly thought
out so as to be finished before it was practically begun. I think
he proved his saying to be true, that the fundamental principles
of decorative art, as in all art, are based on laws as exact as
those of the known sciences. He concluded that what the
knowledge of a fundamental base has done for music, a similarly
demonstrative method must do for painting. The musical
vocabulary which he used to distinguish his creations always
struck me as singularly appropriate ; though he had no knowledge
of music. On his teaching, I based my essay, Rainbow Music,
a treatise on the philosophy of harmony in ' colour-grouping.' . . .
You will have heard him reiterate that a portrait was worth
nothing unless it was decorative, and that the subject must be
painted well inside, or within, the frame, and not outside as the
generality of painters place it, and that what we are accustomed
to call life-size in portraiture is in reality colossal. I remember
best one of his many witty sayings, ' Velasquez always portrayed
his standing subjects standing on their legs' '

Before his trial came on, the idea of opening an atelier
for students occurred to him, and as the studio at No. 2
Lindsey Row was far too small, he decided to give up the
house, and Godwin was commissioned to build a new one
in Tite Street. Up to this time Whistler had never had
a studio in Chelsea. All his pictures had been painted in
ordinary rooms, without a top light, partly, no doubt,
because he wanted to paint his sitters under natural, not

222 [1878

THE WHITE HOUSE

artificial conditions. Even in his later studios in the Rue
Notre-Dame-des-Champs, in Paris, and in Fitzroy Street,
London, shades and screens were so drawn that the
light usually came in as from an ordinary window. He was
trying to put the figure into the atmosphere that surrounded
it, not to cut it out of this atmosphere. But the want of
space at Lindsey Row was a continual inconvenience to
himself, and made students an impossibility. The scheme
of opening an atelier seemed to promise success. Among
artists, there were always the few who believed in Whistler.
Though he showed no pictures in Paris in 1878, Duranty
only expressed the prevailing feeling when, in the Gazette
des Beaux-Arts, he referred to Whistler's influence on the
British painters who were hung in the Exhibition. Whistler
had every reason to believe that, once he had a studio large
enough to receive them, the students would come to it. The
White House, low, three-storied, simple in ornament, is
modest and unassuming compared to many other houses in
Tite Street. It has been much changed, but the general
plan still survives. When it was built, it shared the usual
fate of everything associated with Whistler. The white
brick of the walls, the green " Eureka " slate of the roof,
the Portland stone facings, the greyish blue door and wood-
work were as " eccentric " and " fantastic " as Whistler
himself to ordinary journalists. To architectural papers
they were the cause of violent debate and reckless
calling of names. To the Metropolitan Board of Works, the
simplicity of design was suspiciously plain and ugly, and
mouldings in specified places were insisted upon in return for
the necessary licence to build. Discussion followed discussion,
and all, as well as we can now judge, because the studio was
the most important feature of the interior and placed at the
top of the house, because windows and doors were made
where they were wanted, " and not with Baker Street regu-
1878] 223

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

larity," because Godwin and Whistler liked the " lovely
effect " of the green tiles with the white walls. Mr. Quilter,
who bought the house in 1879 and altered it, probably
ruined the colour-scheme which Whistler had arranged,
and the interior decoration, if it was ever completely
carried out, does not now exist.

The house in Lindsey Row was let to Mr. Sydney Morse,
whose tenancy was to begin at midsummer 1878, and who
was to be married before taking possession. The cares
crowding upon Whistler did not prevent those acts of kindli-
ness for which he was seldom given credit. He arranged
the scheme of colour throughout the house for the new tenants,
getting his man Cossens to do the distempering. Mrs. Morse
writes :

" He was so afraid that we should do it wrongly that he per-
sonally superintended the work, and mixed the colour himself,
though in consequence of this a whole ' wash * for the dining-
room was spoilt, as he forgot to stir it up at the right moment
— there was great discussion about gold size. The hall had two
fine panels in blue on white by Whistler, two ships with sails set
at sea. The house was coloured as 'a sunset.' The gold dado
on the stairs was dotted with pink and white chrysanthemum
petals. The drawing-room was papered, also the studio, but
not until Whistler had gone in September."

He went to the wedding, on June 1, at Carshalton, and the
incident Mrs. Morse likes best to recall is his courtesy to an
old and feeble family governess, who was returning to town
in the same train. Whistler not only looked after her on
the journey, but, instead of getting out at his station, went
on to hers, and put her safely into an omnibus, so that she
said afterwards she had never met so kind a young man.

The one thing he could not do was to give up the house
at the time appointed. June 25 came, and he was still there.
July passed, and he had not gone : not until the middle of
August could he get out, and even then he kept the studio.
224 [1878

THE WHITE HOUSE

It was October when he moved into the White House, and
it is surprising that he moved in at all. A man's money
troubles are nobody's business save his own. But Whistler's
debts and difficulties had everything to do with his movements
and his work during the next few years, while gossip seizing
upon them, as upon all his affairs, made them public property.
He had quarrelled with his principal patron, Leyland, to
whose sister-in-law he had been at one time engaged. But
the engagement was broken, his mother's health kept her
at Hastings, and he was alone. The criticism of the last
few years told severely upon the sale of his pictures, upon
his commissions for portraits, upon the man himself. Howell,
who had " started cheques and orders flying about," and
who attended to most business details, kept a diary during
part of 1877, and all of 1878, which we have been able to
consult. To look through it is to share Whistler's own
indignation that so great an artist should be reduced to such
shifts. In Kensington and St. John's Wood palaces, Acade-
micians could not turn pictures out fast enough for the com-
peting crowd. Whistler was often compelled to borrow a
few shillings from a friend. There are legends of his taking
a hansom and driving to find somebody to lend him half a
crown to pay for it, and before he had found anybody and
could get rid of the cab the fare had mounted to a guinea.
Howell's diary shows how he raised money before he could
lend it to Whistler. Sometimes larger sums than he could
manage were arranged for with Mr. Anderson Rose, Whistler's
friend and solicitor, who also looked after his affairs. As
" ill and worried," Howell describes Whistler on one of the
visits to Mr. Rose, and every reason there was that he should
be. A Mr. Blott figures largely in other transactions.
Whistler's letters to him got into the hands of dealers, and
have been sold and published, and it would be useless to
ignore Whistler's relations jwith him. Debts were pressing
1878] i : p 225

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

upon him. Money for the White House had to be obtained.
To Mr. Blott he gave his Carlyle as security for the sum of a
hundred and fifty pounds, agreeing to pay interest, offering
other pictures as security, if a sum of four hundred in all
could be advanced. Cheques were protested, writs were
threatened. The marvel is that Whistler could work at all.
The pictures he could not sell went wandering about as
hostages. The Mother for a while was with Mrs. Noseda,
the Strand printseller. We have heard that she would have
sold it for a hundred pounds. Mr. Rawlinson, who saw it
either there or at Mr. Graves', has told us that he felt the
impossibility of any friend buying it under such circumstances,
after having seen it at Lindsey Row, where it hung in
Whistler's bedroom, and was shown by him with reverence.
When it came to Whistler's knowledge that Mrs. Noseda
was offering the picture for this price, he is said to have gone
at once to remonstrate, and by his vehemence to have made
her ill.

One man who helped him through these troubled times
was Mr. Graves, head of the firm in Pall Mall. Mr. Graves,
introduced to Whistler by Howell, agreed to reproduce the
portrait of Carlyle in mezzotint, and Howell bought the copy-
right of the engraving from Whistler for eighty pounds and
six proofs. W. Josey was commissioned to make the plate.
Three hundred signed proofs of a first state were to be printed.
The plate would not stand so large an edition ; it was steel-
faced and, as the steel-facing of mezzotint was not possible,
turned out a failure. The attempt to remove the steel ruined
the ground, and Josey had to be called in to go over it again.
In the actual first state, the floor was perfectly smooth, but,
the steel-facing taken off, a spot appeared in the plate which
never could be got out, and remained there through the
edition. After every seventy proofs printed, Josey had to
work on the plate and bring it back, as well as he could, to
226 [1878

THE WHITE HOUSE

its original condition. Whistler did not like the first proofs
and offered to show the printers how to do them. Mr. Graves
went with him to Mr. Holdgate, the printer in London Street.
Whistler brought his own ink, put on a large apron, inked
the plate as he would an etched one, while the whole shop
stood looking on. When the plate was inked and wiped,
and ready, it was put through the press, and it came out a
shadow, the ink being far too weak. Whistler did not try
a second time. Mr. Graves preserved the proof, writing on
it that WTiistler pulled it, and sold it for three guineas : to
whom, he does not remember. Eventually, Whistler was
satisfied, for How ell, on December 2, 1878, gave Whistler
what he calls his first proof, and the diary says : " Whistler
and the Doctor [the brother] were delighted." It is also
recorded in the diary that one of Whistler's six proofs was
sold to Lord Beaconsfield.

The print of the Carlyle was not unsuccessful. At Howell's
suggestion, Mr. Graves agreed to give Whistler a thousand
pounds for a portrait of Disraeli, and the copyright : a plate
to be made from it as a companion to the Carlyle. Another
diary, Mr. Alan S. Cole's, gives the date of Whistler's visit
to Disraeli :

" September 19, 1878. — Called on J., who told me of his interview
with Lord Beaconsfield as to painting a portrait of him. He had
been down at Hughenden — saw the old gentleman, who, however,
declined."

Whistler's version of the visit was amusing :

" Everything was most wonderful. We were the two artists
together — recognising each other at a glance ! ' If I sit to any
one, it will be to you, Mr. Whistler/ were Disraeli's last words
as he left me at the gate. And then he sat to Millais ! "

This scheme falling through, Mr. Graves commissioned
Josey to reproduce the Mother, and afterwards the Miss Rosa
Corder, painted as a commission from Howell. Whistler told
1878] 227

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

us he offered the portrait as a present to Howell, who declined
and insisted on paying a hundred guineas for it, and this is
the amount entered in Howell's diary as paid to Whistler
on September 9, 1878. It was sold to Mr. Canfield, in 1903,
for two thousand pounds.

After the two pictures had been reproduced by Josey,
Howell deposited in the same way three of the Nocturnes
with Mr. Graves : The Falling Rocket, The Fire Wheel, Old
Battersea Bridge — Blue and Gold, and also the portrait of
Miss Franklin. Of these pictures no reproductions were
made. Whistler had not a minute to spare from legal
troubles and impatient creditors. " Poor J. turned up,
depressed — very hard up, and fearful of getting old," Mr.
Cole wrote in his diary for October 16, 1878. Whistler
had rea.son for depression. It was now that Howell's diary
records his purchase of the Irving for ten pounds and a
sealskin coat. There is nothing more tragic in Rembrandt's
bankruptcy than this. A few weeks later, on November 25
(1878), the trial began.

228 [1878

CHAPTER XIX. THE TRIAL. THE
YEAR EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT

THE action Whistler v. Ruskin is the most notorious
episode in Whistler's life. And yet the reason for it,
" the spirit of the matter," was ignored at the time, and
has remained a mystery ever since.

The appearance of Whistler's pictures at the Grosvenor
was the signal for a general outcry. The loudest voice and
the shrillest was that of John Ruskin, leader of taste, critic
of art, prophet and propounder of new gospels of " the
Beautiful." He carried with him not only a following of
believers, but the public who had been told for years that
in him lay the truth. Whistler felt that either he or Ruskin
must settle the question whether an artist may say what he
wants, do what he wants, paint what he wants, honestly in
his own way, though this may not be understood by the
patron, the critic, the Academy, or the real judge, the man
in the street ; whether the artist should rule himself or be
ruled. The case was, he said, " between the Brush and the
Pen." His motives were ignored, the proceedings made a
jest, and the verdict treated as a farce. Few could, or
do, realise even to day, that Whistler was in earnest, that
the trial was a defence of his principles, and the verdict a
public justification of his artistic belief.

At the time of the trial, Whistler was to the British public
a charlatan, a mountebank. Ruskin was the people's
prophet, and the professor of art. Whistler denied the right
of a master of English literature, who had become the popu-
1878] 229

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

lariser of pictures, to consider himself a prophet and a pope,
as Ruskin undoubtedly did, his head turned by his success
in the defence of the Pre-Raphaelites and the booming of
Turner. So good a friend of Ruskin's as Mr. W. M. Rossetti
thought him " substantially wrong in the matter," and points
out that his mind broke down at times, and that his mental
troubles had begun as far back as 1860. His conceit and
his vanity, as we have said, can hardly be explained in any
other way. Unfortunately for him, he lived in the only
country where his arrogant pretensions would have been
countenanced, though, owing to the present acceptance of
England and everything English, he has become something
of a fetich in France and Italy, just as he begins to be dis-
credited as critic at home. He was rich, the first qualifi-
cation for success ; he was a University man, the second ;
he was keen to contribute long letters to the Times. He
was a more or less generous patron of the artists he admired ;
moreover, he was a master of English : therefore he could
commit any absurdity he wanted. As Whistler said,
political economists considered him a great art critic,
and artists looked upon him as a great political econo-
mist. Sometimes we wondered, when Whistler laughed,
if there was not another reason, beside mental illness,
for Ruskin's inconsequent personal venom. He never
appreciated the great artists of the world, save certain
Italians, recognised long before. His estimate of Velasquez
and Rembrandt, and his comparison between Turner and
Constable, are sufficient to prove how little his now un-
heeded sermons were ever worth. While he failed to
comprehend Charles Keene, he went into ecstasies over
Kate Greenaway. Whistler, knowing all this, may have
offended. Mr. Collingwood wrote that, long before the
trial, Whistler " had made overtures to the great critic
through Mr. Swinburne, the poet ; but he had not been
230 [1878

(DR.) WHISTLER

MIMMIE" (McXKii.i.) WIIISTI.K.R

THE TWO BROTHERS AS BOYS AXD HEX

THE TRIAL

taken seriously." It is certain Ruskin was not taken
seriously by the great artist.

The publication of Ruskin's criticism of the Grosvenor in
1877 could have had no enduring ill-effect on Whistler, and
we do not imagine he thought it could. But he determined
at any cost to drive this self-anointed preacher from his
pulpit. With the support of Mr. Anderson Rose, his solicitor,
he went to work to prepare the case, and we know the
endless pains and trouble he took. He thought, at first, that
the artists Would be on his side, and would combine with
him to drive the false prophet out of the temple. But
Ruskin, the critic, was to them more powerful than Whistler,
the painter, and when the time came they all sneaked away
except Albert Moore. Besides, there was the unspoken hope
that the Yankee would lose. Whistler told us

" they all hoped they could drive me out of the country, or kill
me ! And if I hadn't had the constitution of a Government
mule, they would."

Even Charles Keene, whom Whistler considered the greatest
English artist since Hogarth, could write on November
24, 1878:

" Whistler's case against Ruskin comes off, I believe, on
Monday. He wants to subpoena me as a witness as to whether
he is (as Ruskin says) an impostor or not. I told him I should
be glad to record my opinion, but begged him to do without me
if he could. They say it will most likely be settled on the point
of law without going into evidence, but if the evidence is adduced,
it will be the greatest ' lark ' that has been known for a long
time in the courts."

Keene did not dare to stand up publicly for Whistler and
for art, and the bitterness of it all is in those last words —
" a lark ! "

On November 25, 1878, in the Exchequer Chamber at
Westminster, the action for libel, in which " Mr. James
1878] 231

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Abbott McNeill Whistler, an artist, seeks to recover damages
against Mr. John Ruskin, the well-known author and art
critic," was brought up before Baron Huddleston and a
special jury. Our account is compiled chiefly from the
reports published in the Times and the Daily News, November
26 and 27, 1878, from The Gentle Art and from what Whistler,
Mr. Rossetti, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Graves and others who
were present have told us. According to Lady Burne-Jones,
Ruskin had been delighted at the prospect of the trial :

" It's nuts and nectar to me, the notion of having to answer
for myself in court, and the whole thing will enable me to assert
some principles of art economy which I've never got into the
public's head by writing ; but may get sent over all the world
vividly in a newspaper report or two."

Nuts and nectar turned into gall and vinegar. Through the
early winter of 1878, rumours of his ill-health reached the
papers. Lady Burne-Jones adds that, when the action was
brought, " although he had quite recovered from his illness,
he was not allowed to appear."

The case excited great interest, and the court was crowded,
even the passages being filled. Mr. Sergeant Parry and
Mr. Petheram were counsel for the plaintiff, and the Attorney-
General (Sir John Holker) and Mr. Bowen for the defendant.
Mr. Sergeant Parry opened the case for Whistler,

" who has followed the profession of an artist for many years,
while Mr. Ruskin is a gentleman well known to all of us, and
holding perhaps the highest position in Europe or America as an
art critic. Some of his works are destined to immortality, and
it is the more surprising, therefore, that a gentleman, holding
such a position, could traduce another in a way that would lead
that other to come into a court of law to ask for damages. The
jury, after hearing the case, will come to the conclusion that a
great injustice has been done Mr. Whistler, in the United States,
has earned a reputation as a painter and an artist. He is not
merely a painter, but has likewise distinguished himself in the
232 [1878

THK FALLING ROCKET
Xocturne in Black aiul Gold)

THE TRIAL

capacity of etcher, achieving considerable honours in that depart-
ment of art. He has been an unwearied worker in his profession,
always desiring to succeed, and if he had formed an erroneous
opinion, he should not have been treated with contempt and
ridicule. Mr. Ruskin edits a publication called Fors Clavigera,
that has a large circulation among artists and art patrons. In
the July number of 1877 appeared a criticism of the pictures in
the Grosvenor, containing the paragraph which is the defamatory
matter complained of. Sir Coutts Lindsay is described as an
amateur, both in art and shop-keeping, who must take up one
business or the other. Mannerisms and errors are pointed out
in the work of Burne-Jones, but whatever their extent, his
pictures ' are never affected or indolent. The work is natural
to the painter, however strange to us, wrought with the utmost
conscience and care, however far, to his or our desire, the result
may seem to be incomplete. Scarcely so much can be said for
any other pictures of the modern schools. Their eccentricities
are almost always in some degree forced, and their imperfections
gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. For Mr. Whistler's
own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, Sir
Coutts Lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery
in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approaches
the aspect of wilful imposture. I have seen and heard much of
cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a
coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in
the public's face.' Mr. Ruskin pleaded that the alleged libel
was privileged, as being a fair and bona fide criticism upon a
painting which the plaintiff had exposed to public view. But
the terms in which Mr. Ruskin has spoken of the plaintiff are
unfair and ungentlemanly, and are calculated to, and have
done him, considerable injury, and it will be for the jury to say
what damages the plaintiff is entitled to."

Whistler was the first witness called, and is reported to
have begun his evidence by giving St. Petersburg as his
birth-place. He continued :

" I studied in Paris, with Du Maurier, Poynter, Armstrong.
I was awarded a gold medal at The Hague . . . my etchings are
in the British Museum and Windsor Castle collections. I ex-
hibited eight pictures at the Grosvenor Gallery in the summer
1878] 233

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

of 1877. No pictures were exhibited there save on invitation.
I was invited by Sir Coutts Lindsay to exhibit. The first was
a Nocturne, in Black and Gold — The Falling Rocket. The second, a
Nocturne in Blue and Silver [since called Blue and Gold — Old
Batter sea Bridge]. The third, a Nocturne in Blue and Gold,
belonging to the Hon. Mrs. Percy Wyndham. The fourth, a
Nocturne in Blue and Silver, belonging to Mrs. Leyland. The fifth,
an Arrangement in Black — Irving as Philip II. of Spain. The
sixth, a Harmony in Amber and Black. The seventh, an Arrange-
ment in Brown. In addition to the original eight, there was a
portrait of Mr. Carlyle. That portrait was painted from sittings
Mr. Carlyle gave me. It has since been engraved, and the artist's
proofs were all subscribed for. The Nocturnes, all but two, were
sold before they went to the Grosvenor Gallery. One of them
was sold to the Hon. Percy Wyndham for two hundred guineas
— the one in Blue and Gold. One I sent to Mr. Graham in lieu
of a former commission, the amount of which was a hundred
and fifty guineas. A third one, Blue and Silver, I presented to
Mrs. Leyland. The one that was for sale was in Black and Gold
—The Falling Rocket"

Curiously, the only one for sale was pounced on by Ruskin.
The coxcomb was trying to get two hundred guineas.

Asked whether, since the publication of the criticism, he
had sold a Nocturne, Whistler answered : " Not by any
means at the same price as before."

The portraits of Irving and Carlyle were produced in court,
and he is said to have described the Irving as " a large impres-
sion— a sketch ; it was not intended as a finished picture."
We do not believe he said anything of the sort.

He was then asked for his definition of a Nocturne :

" I have perhaps meant rather to indicate an artistic interest
alone in the work, divesting the picture from any outside sort of
interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. It is
an arrangement of line, form and colour first, and I make use of
any incident of it which shall bring about a symmetrical result.
Among my works are some night pieces ; and I have chosen the
word Nocturne because it generalises and simplifies the whole
set of them."
234 [1878

THE TRIAL

The Falling Rocket, though it is difficult here to follow the
case, was evidently produced at this point upside down ;
Whistler, describing it as a night piece, said it represented
the fireworks at Cremorne.

Attorney-General : " Not a view of Cremorne ? "
Whistler : "If it were called a view of Cremorne, it would
certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part
of the beholders. (Laughter.) It is an artistic arrangement."

Attorney-General : " Why do you call Mr. Irving an Arrange-
ment in Black ? " (Laughter.)

Even the judge interposed, though in jest for there was
more laughter, and explained that the picture, not Mr.
Irving, was the Arrangement.

Whistler : " All these works are impressions of my own. I
make them my study. I suppose them to appeal to none but
those who may understand the technical matter."

And he added that it would be possible to see the pictures
in Westminster Palace Hotel close by, where he had placed
them for the purpose.

Attorney-General : " I suppose you are willing to admit that
your pictures exhibit some eccentricities. You have been told
that over and over again ? "

Whistler : " Yes, very often." (Laughter.)

Attorney-General : " You send them to the Gallery to invite
the admiration of the public ? "

Whistler : " That would be such vast absurdity on my part
that I don't think I could." (Laughter.)

Attorney-General : " Did it take you much time to paint the
Nocturne in Black and Gold ? How soon did you knock it off ? "
(Laughter.)

Whistler : " I knocked it off possibly in a couple of days."

In The Gentle Art this is reported :

Attorney-General : " Can you tell me how long it took you
to knock off that Nocturne ? "

Whistler : " I beg your pardon ? " (Laughter.)/
1878] 235

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Attorney-General : " I am afraid that I am using a term that
applies rather perhaps to my own work." . . .

Whistler : . ..." Let us say then, how long did I take to —
' knock off,' I think that is it — to knock off that Nocturne ;
well, as well as I remember, about a day. ... I may have
still put a few more touches to it the next day if the painting
were not dry. I had better say then, that I was two days at
work on it."

Attorney-General : " The labour of two days, then, is that for
which you ask two hundred guineas ? "

Whistler : " No ; I ask it for the knowledge of a life-
time." . . .

Attorney-General : " You don't approve of criticism ? "

Whistler : "I should not disapprove in any way of technical
criticism by a man whose life is passed in the practice of the science
which he criticises ; but, for the opinion of a man whose life is
not so passed, I would have as little regard as you would, if he
expressed an opinion on law."

Attorney-General : " You expect to be criticised ? "

Whistler : " Yes, certainly ; and I do not expect to be affected
by it until it comes to be a case of this kind."

The Nocturne, the Blue and Silver, was then produced.

Whistler : " It represents Battersea Bridge by moonlight."

The Judge : "Is this part of the picture at the top old Battersea
Bridge ? Are those figures on the top of the bridge intended
for people ? "

Whistler : " They are just what you like."

The Judge : " That is a barge beneath ? "

Whistler : " Yes, I am very much flattered at your seeing
that. The picture is simply a representation of moonlight.
My whole scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony
of colour."

The Judge : " How long did it take you to paint that picture ? "

Whistler : "I completed the work in one day, after having
arranged the idea in my mind." *

* This was the picture that then belonged to Mr. Graham, that some years after,
at his sale at Christie's was received with hisses, that was then purchased by
Mr. Robert H. C. Harrison for sixty pounds, and that at the close of the London
Whistler Memorial Exhibition was bought for two thousand guineas by the National
Arts Collection Fund, presented to the nation, and hung in the National Gallery.
236 [1878

THE TRIAL

The court adjourned, and the jury went to see the pictures
at the Westminster Palace Hotel. When, on their return,
the Nocturne in Black and Gold — The Falling Rocket, was
produced, the Attorney-General asked :

" How long did it take you to paint that ? "

Whistler : " One whole day and part of another."

Attorney-General : " What is the peculiar beauty of that
picture ? "

Whistler : " It would be impossible for me to explain to you,
I am afraid, although I daresay I could to a sympathetic ear."

Attorney-General : " Do you not think that anybody looking
at the picture might fairly come to the conclusion that it had
no particular beauty ? "

Whistler : "I have strong evidence that Mr. Ruskin did come
to that conclusion."

Attorney-General : " Do you think it fair that Mr. Ruskin
should come to that conclusion ? "

Whistler : " What might be fair to Mr. Ruskin, I cannot
answer. No artist of culture would come to that conclusion."

Attorney-General : " Do you offer that picture to the public
as one of particular beauty, fairly worth two hundred guineas ? "

Whistler : "I offer it as a work that I have conscientiously
executed, and that I think worth the money. I would hold my
reputation upon this, as I would upon any of my other works."

Mr. W. M. Rossetti was the next witness called. He had
been subpoenaed the day before. He was Ruskin's friend
as well as Whistler's, and the position was not pleasant.
But, he has written us, he was " compelled to act, willy-nilly,
in opposition to Ruskin's interest in the action."

Rossetti : "I consider the Blue and Silver an artistic and
beautiful representation of a pale but bright moonlight. I
admire Mr. Whistler's pictures, but not without exception. I
appreciate the meaning of the titles. The Falling Rocket is not
one of the pictures I admire."

Attorney-General : " Is it a gem ? " (Laughter.)

Rossetti: "No."

Attorney-General : " Is it an exquisite painting ? "

Rossetti: "No."
1878] 237

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Attorney-General : " Is it very beautiful ? "

Rossetti : " No."

Attorney-General : " Is it a work of art ? "

Rossetti : " Yes, it is."

Attorney-General : "Is it worth two hundred guineas ? "

Rossetti : " Yes."

Albert Moore, when he was called, said that Whistler's
pictures were beautiful works of art, and that no other
painter could have succeeded in them as he had. The Black
and Gold he looked upon as simply marvellous, the most
consummate art. Asked if there was eccentricity in the
picture, he said he should call it originality.

W. G. Wills, Whistler's only other witness, testified to the
knowledge shown in the pictures ; they were the works of
a man of genius.

Mr. Algernon Graves had been subpoenaed, and was in
court' to give evidence to the popularity of the Carlyle. As
the picture was not catalogued when exhibited at the Gros-
venor, Baron Huddleston ruled that there was no proof of
its having been exhibited in 1877, and he was not called.

The Attorney-General submitted there was no case. But
Baron Huddleston could not deny that the criticism, as it
stood, held Whistler's work up to ridicule and contempt ;
that so far it was libellous, and must, therefore, go to the
jury. It was for the Attorney-General to prove it fair and
honest criticism.

The Attorney-General's address to the jury began with
praise of Ruskin, it went on with ridicule of the testimony
for the plaintiff, it finished with contempt for Whistler and
his work.

" The Nocturnes were not worthy the name of great works
of art. He had that morning looked into the dictionary for the
meaning of coxcomb, and found that the word carried the old
idea of the licensed jester, who had a cap on his head with a
cock's comb in it. If that were the true definition, Mr. Whistler
238 [1878

THE TRIAL

should not complain, because his pictures were capital jests
which had afforded much amusement to the public. He said,
without fear of contradiction, that, if Mr. Whistler founded his
reputation on the pictures he had shown in the Grosvenor Gallery,
the Nocturne in Black and Gold, the Nocturne in Blue and Silver,
his Arrangement of Irving in Black, his representation of the
Ladies in Brown, and his Symphonies in Grey and Yellow, he
was a mere pretender to the art of painting."

In Ruskin's absence, Burne-Jones was the first witness
called for the defence. Lady Burne-Jones says, in her
Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, that on November 2,
Ruskin had written to him :

" I gave your name to the blessed lawyer, as chief of men to
whom they might refer for anything which, in their wisdom, they
can't discern unaided concerning me."

She adds that, for her husband :

" Few positions could have been more annoying or difficult,
for the paragraph containing the sentence in question — one of
Ruskin's severest condemnations — was practically a comparison
between Mr. Whistler's work and Edward's own. But the subject
covered so much wider ground than any personality that Edward
was finally able to put this thought aside, and did with calmness
what he had undertaken to do, namely — endorse Ruskin's criticism
that good workmanship was essential to a good picture."

Mr. Walter Crane states, in his Reminiscences, that he
met Burne-Jones at dinner, at Leyland's, not long before
the trial, and that then Burne-Jones would not see Whistler's
merits as an artist. " He seemed to think there was only
one right way of painting. . . . Under the circumstances,
he could hardly afford to allow any credit to Whistler." In
court, however, Burne-Jones temporised. He admitted
Whistler's art, while he regretted the want of finish in
Whistler's pictures : so strengthening the public's impression
of the laziness, levity, or incompetence of Whistler. In his
' deliberate judgment," Mrs. Leyland's Blue and Silver was
1878] 239

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

a work of art, but a very incomplete one. It did not, in
any sense whatever, show the finish of a complete work
of art — yet

" it is masterly. Neither in composition, detail, nor form has the
picture any quality whatever, but, in colour, it has a very fine
quality. . . . Blue and Silver — Old Battersea Bridge, in colour is
even better than the other. It is more formless, it is bewildering
in form. As to composition and detail, there is none whatever.
It has no finish. I do not think Mr. Whistler intended it to be
regarded as a finished picture."

Mr. Bowen : " Now, take the Nocturne in Black and Gold —
The Falling Rocket, is that, in your opinion, a work of art ? "

Burne-Jones : " No, I cannot say that it is. It is only one
of a thousand failures that artists have made in their efforts to
paint night."

Mr. Bowen : "Is that picture in your judgment worth two
hundred guineas ? "

Burne-Jones : " No, I cannot say it is, seeing how much careful
work men do for much less. Mr. Whistler gave infinite promise
at first, but I do not think he has fulfilled it. I think he has
evaded the great difficulty of painting, and has not tested his
powers by carrying it out. The difficulties in painting increase
daily as the work progresses, and that is the reason why so many
of us fail. We are none of us perfect. The danger is this, that
if unfinished pictures become common, we shall arrive at a stage
of mere manufacture and the art of the country will be degraded."

Mr. Frith, R.A., was next called. Truly, Ruskin found
himself with strange supporters. Frith was chosen, we
have been told, because Ruskin wanted some one who could
not be thought biased in his favour.

Mr. Bowen : " Are the pictures works of art ? "

Frith : " I should say not."

Mr. Bowen : Is the Nocturne in Blue and Gold a serious work
of art ? "

Frith : " Not to me. It is not worth, in my opinion, two
hundred guineas. Old Battersea Bridge does not convey the
impression of moonlight to me in the slightest degree. The colour
does .not represent any more than you could get from a bit of
wall-paper or silk."
240 [1878

THE TRIAL

In cross-examination, he flatly contradicted himself, and said
that he thought Mr. Whistler had " very great power as
an artist."

Ruskin's final supporter was Tom Taylor, critic of the
Times. No, he said, the Nocturne in Black and Gold was not
a good picture, and, to prove it, he read his own criticism
in the Times, and his assertion there that the Nocturnes were
worth doing because they were the only things that Whistler
could do.

A portrait by Titian was then shown, in order to explain
Burne-Jones' idea of finish, and the jury, mistaking it for
a Whistler, would have none of it.

Mr. Bowen, in summing up the case, said all that Ruskin
had done was to express an opinion on Whistler's pictures —
an opinion to which he adhered. This was about all he
could say, except, in conclusion, to appeal to the jury. There
really was no defence. Mr. Sergeant Parry, in his reply,
pointed out that they had not dared to ask if Whistler
deserved to be stigmatised as a wilful impostor, and that,
even if Ruskin had not been well enough to attend the court,

" he might have been examined before a commission. His decree
has gone forth that Mr. Whistler's pictures were worthless. He
has not supported that by evidence. He has not condescended
to give reasons for the view he has taken, he has treated us with
contempt, as he treated Mr. Whistler. He has said : ' I, Mr.
Ruskin, seated on my throne of art, say what I please and expect
all the world to agree with me.' Mr. Ruskin is great as a writer,
but not as a man ; as a man he has degraded himself. His tone
in writing the article is personal and malicious. Mr. Ruskin's
criticism of Mr. Whistler's pictures is almost exclusively in the
nature of a personal attack, a pretended criticism of art which
is really a criticism upon the man himself, and calculated to
injure him. It was written recklessly, and for the purpose of
holding him up to ridicule and contempt. Mr. Ruskin has gone
out of his way to attack Mr. Whistler personally, and must
answer for the consequences of having written a damnatory
1878] I:Q 241

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

attack upon the painter. This is what is called pungent criticism,
stinging criticism, but it is defamatory, and I hope the jury will
mark their disapproval by their verdict."

The judge in summing up, pointed out that

" there are certain words by Mr. Ruskin, about which, I should
think, no one would entertain a doubt : those words amount to
a libel. The critic should confine himself to criticism, and not
make it a veil for personal censure or for showing his power.
The question for the jury is, did Mr. Whistler's ideas of art justify
the language used by Mr. Ruskin ? And the further question is
whether the insult offered — if insult there has been — is of such
a gross character as to call for substantial damages ; whether
it is a case for merely contemptuous damages to the extent of a
farthing, or something of that sort, indicating that it is one
which ought never to have been brought into court, and in which
no pecuniary damage has been sustained ; or whether the case
is one which calls for damages in some small sum as indicating
the opinion of the jury that the offender has gone beyond the
strict letter of the law."

After an hour's deliberation, the jury gave their verdict
for the plaintiff — damages one farthing. The judge em-
phasised his contempt by giving judgment for the plaintiff
without costs ; that is, both sides had to pay.

" The whole thing was a hateful affair," Burne- Jones
wrote to Rossetti, and many agreed with him, though for
other reasons. The Times, the Spectator, and the Portfolio
pronounced the verdict satisfactory to neither party, virtually
a censure upon both, who alike would have to suffer heavily.
Mr. Graves, who watched the trial without the responsibility
he was well disposed to meet, says :

" I have always felt that, had the plaintiff's counsel impressed
upon the jury that Mr. Ruskin had mentioned the price asked
for the picture, a matter that has always been quite outside the
critic's province, as well as criticising them as works of art, the
result to Mr. Whistler would have been more in his favour. Mr.
Tom Taylor was in the box, and he was never asked whether
he had ever criticised the price as well as the quality."
242 [1878

THE TRIAL

Mr. Armstrong has told us of the suppression of important
letters that must have influenced the verdict. He writes
us :

" I think I cannot have been in London when the trial took
place ; at any rate, I was not present in court. A little while
before it came on, I met Whistler one evening at the Arts Club,
and he told me of his hopes of a favourable result. My sympathies
were entirely on his side. I feared, however, that a jury could
never be brought to see any beauty in Jimmie's pictures — even
the best of them — and that therefore they might condone the
brutality of Mr. Ruskin's attack. Whistler assured me that he
had evidence, which I believed could not fail to be effective, in
the shape of letters from Leighton, P.R.A. ; Burton, Director
of the National Gallery ; and Poynter, R.A., then Director for
Art at S.K., speaking highly of the moonlight pictures. These
letters seemed to me most important (I never read them), for
they were from the hands of people in official positions, whose
good words would have weight with the British juryman, or the
ordinary bourgeois. Nothing was said about these letters in the
newspaper reports of the trial, and I asked Jimmie the reason
for this omission of the strongest evidence on his side. He
told me that the writers of the letters had objected to their being
put in, and so he had refrained from using them, and without
the personal testimony of the writers they would not have been
accepted as evidence in court. The accounts he gave of the
trial were very funny. He described the bewilderment of the
jury as the paintings — the Nocturnes — were passed round for
their inspection, and how, when, last of all, Mr. Ruskin's Titian
was handed to them, one exclaimed, ' Oh, come ! we have had
enough of these Whistlers ! ' He said his pictures were presented
to them upside down. About a fortnight after the trial, I saw
Holker, at that time Solicitor- or Attorney-General, who led
for Mr. Ruskin, and asked him if he had been helping to smirch
any more poor artists. He replied that he was bound to do
the best he could for his client. I told him he would never have
allowed the exhibition of the pictures in court if he had been
Whistler's counsel, and he asked : ' Why didn't Jimmie have me ?'
I explained that I had recommended his being retained, but it
was objected that his fee would be too heavy, and he said :
1878] , 243

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

* I'd have done it for nothing for Jimmie.' I was very sorry
that Mr. Ruskin was not punished."

Mr. Arthur Severn writes us that, at the Ruskin trial, he

" was on the opposite side, although my sympathies were rather
with Whistler, whose Nocturne in Black and Gold I knew to be
very carefully painted. Whenever we met, he was always most
courteous, quite understanding my position. During the trial,
two or three little incidents happened which I may mention.
One of the Nocturnes was handed across the court over the
people's heads, so that Whistler might verify it as his work.
On its way, an old gentleman with a bald head got a tap from
the frame, then the picture showed signs of falling out of its
frame, and when Sergeant Parry turned to Whistler and said :

* Is that your work, Mr. Whistler ? ' the artist, putting his eye-
glass up, and with his slight American twang, said : ' Well, it
was, but if it goes on much longer in that way, I don't think
it will be.' I thought Whistler looked anxious whilst the jury
was -away. Another trial seemed to come on, so as not to waste
time. The court was very dark, and candles had to be brought
in — it seemed to be about some rope, and huge coils were on the
solicitor's table. A very stupid clerk was being examined.
Nothing intelligent could be got out of him, and at last Mr. Day
one of the counsel (afterwards the judge) said : ' Give him the
rope's end,' which produced great laughter in court, in which
WTiistler heartily joined. Then, suddenly, a hush fell on the
court ; the jury returned a verdict for Whistler, damages, one
farthing."

There was a report of an application for a new trial. A
desire was expressed on many sides that friends of artist and
critic might be allowed to adjust the dispute. But Whistler
made no application, called for no arbitration. He accepted
his farthing damages. The British public rallied to their
prophet, and got up a subscription for the rich man. It was
managed by the Fine Art Society. The account was opened
at the Union Bank of London in the names of Mr. Burne-
Jones, Mr. F. S. Ellis and Mr. Marcus B. Huish, and by
December 10 a subscription list was published, amounting
244 [1878

THE TRIAL

already to one hundred and fifty-one pounds, five shillings
and sixpence, and headed by Mr. Burne- Jones, five guineas.
The costs were estimated at three hundred and eighty-five
pounds.

According to Mr. W. M. Rossetti,

" Whistler then wrote to his solicitor, Mr. Anderson Rose,
saying (and I could not but agree with him so far) that it would
be at least equally appropriate for a band of subscribers to pay
his costs ; and he added, with one of his not easily iraitable
touches : ' And in the event of a subscription, I would willingly
contribute my own mite.' '

Mr. J. P. Heseltine wished to get up a subscription for
Whistler, started it with a contribution of twenty-five
pounds, and a list was opened at the office of UArt, 134
New Bond Street. But nothing came of it, except that
Whistler sent one of his pastels to Mr. Heseltine. For
Whistler, the poor man, the costs were not paid, and he went
through the bankruptcy court.

It is often said that Whistler wore the farthing on his
watch-chain. We never saw it, we never knew him to
wear a watch-chain. But he did make a drawing of the
farthing for The Gentle Art.

1878] 245

CHAPTER XX. BANKRUPTCY. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT
TO EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE.

THE Attorney-General said that Whistler's pictures
afforded amusement to the public, and the trial was
followed by shouts of laughter from every paper that pre-
tended to be comic, and many that did not. There were
caricatures : Whistler " done brown " ; Whistler mounted
on a Nocturne, tilting against Ruskin astride a note-book ;
Whistler and Ruskin showing each other their portraits
upside down. In Punch, Whistler masqueraded as the
" Penny Whizzler," a grotesque bird with a whistle broken
in two for legs, a drawing which he described as an " historical
cartoon." It was by Mr. Sambourne, who wrote to Whistler
to explain that he made it at the request of the editor, Tom
Taylor. Whistler answered that, to have brought about an
Arrangement in Frith, Jones, Punch, and Ruskin, with a
touch of Titian, was a joy in itself sufficient to satisfy even
his craving for curious combinations, and no sentiment need
be thrown away upon what to Sambourne was " this trying
time." Mr. Sambourne's letter and Whistler's reply were
published, to the former's discomfiture, in the World
(December 11, 1878), and they were afterwards reprinted in
The Gentle Art. The Standard said :

" Of course, Mr. Whistler has costs to pay, and the amount

he is to receive from Mr. Buskin, even if economically expended,

will hardly go far to satisfy the claims of his legal advisers. But

he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it, ' knock off '

246 [1878

BANKRUPTCY

three or four ' Symphonies ' or ' Harmonies ' — or perhaps he
might try his hand at a ' Set of Quadrilles in Peacock Blue ' —
and a week's labour will set all square."

The inevitable stream of letters flowed into the Times, and
driblets into other papers. There were interviews. Witti-
cisms went the rounds. " What is more natural than for
a ' Whistler ' to go in for ' airs ' ? " the Figaro asked, and
Whistler himself is reported to have said, " Well, you know,
I don't go so far as to Burne-Jones, but really somebody
ought to burn Jones's pictures ! "

A few papers did not forget that Whistler was an artist,
a few people were sympathetic, and congratulations were
received at the White House. If Whistler was disappointed,
he kept it to himself. He would have liked better to get
his costs and damages, he said. But the verdict was a moral
triumph. He had gone into court, not for damages, but to
vindicate his position, and, therefore, that of all artists.
He made sure that the vindication should become history.
The trial was hardly over when, in December 1878, he pub-
lished Whistler v. Ruskin — Art and Art Critics, the first of
his series of pamphlets in brown paper covers. It was
printed by Messrs. Spottiswoode, published by Messrs.
Chatto and Windus, and dedicated to Albert Moore. The
cover bore the Butterfly, and " J. A. McN. Whistler, The
White House, Chelsea, December 24, 1878." The pamphlet
was the simple statement of his argument to prove the folly
of the Pen when, without knowledge or experience, it ven-
tured to criticise the Brush. It was to him an outrage that,
while literature is left to the literary man, and science to
the scientist, art should be at the mercy of " the one who
was never in it," but whose boast it is that he is doing good
to Art. The critics " are all ' doing good ' — yes, they all do
good to Art. Poor Art ! what a sad state the slut is in, an
these gentlemen shall help her." Whistler could see no
1878] 247

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

loss if Ruskin ceased to preach to the young what he could
not perform, and if he resigned his Slade Professorship, as
he had threatened to do, and promptly did. Why should
he not fill a Chair of Ethics instead ? The cry of the art
critic, " il faut vivre," Whistler said he would meet with the
appropriate answer, " Je ri*en vois pas la necessite." Another
sentence often quoted : "A life passed among pictures
makes not a painter — else the policeman in the National
Gallery might assert himself." Whistler's argument passed
for a novelty, and Art and Art Critics, falling for review into
the hands of the men it abused, was condemned as "nonsense,"
" precious balderdash," absurd with its sprinkling of French ;
as if Whistler could not write better English than any and
all of them. It was regretted that he should make his personal
affairs the basis of cheap popularity. The Saturday Review
" would not be rash enough to say of any pamphlet that it
was the silliest ever produced, but Mr. Whistler's certainly
is not the wisest we have seen." Other comments and criti-
cisms, the killing of Tom Taylor and the new version of
Balaam's ass, are all in The Gentle Art, where they can be
consulted.

Whistler exhibited what he could, and where he could,
exerting himself to make a finer showing than ever at the
Grosvenor of 1879, to which he sent Portrait of Miss Rosa
Corder, Portrait of Miss Connie Gilchrist, The Pacific, Nocturne
in Blue and Gold, six etchings, two studies in chalk, and three
studies in chalk and pastel. Old Putney Bridge, the print
published by the Fine Art Society, was in the Royal
Academy, from which he had been absent for seven years.
Public and critics talked the old nonsense, with here and
there a faint voice crying in the wilderness. Duranty saw
a beauty in Whistler's Nocturnes worthy to report to the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts ; in the Portfolio, Hamerton — pre-
sumably, the note is unsigned — found an amiable word for
248 [1879

BANKRUPTCY

the Rosa Corder and The Pacific ; Mr. Comyns Can* com-
mitted himself in the Academy to the recognition of scope
and strength in Whistler's resources. The praise, however,
was not sufficient to relieve the situation in the White House.
We have not come upon a more characteristic statement of
the popular estimate of Whistler at that time than an article
by Mr. Frederick Wedmore in the Nineteenth Century (August
1879), which he reprinted in his Four Masters of Etching
(1883). As Whistler has been thought foolishly vindictive
in his treatment of his critics, it is fair to remember the
provocation they gave him. Mr. Wedmore's article was
mainly a review of Art and Art Critics, which, evidently, had
goaded him into fury. In his opinion, it was a " trivial
pamphlet." Whistler had exposed the critic ; the critic
tried to pay him back by sneering at the artist :

" Long ago he was an artist of high promise. Now he is an
artist often of agreeable, though sometimes of incomplete and
seemingly wayward performance. . . . We want to look a little
at the more commendable work as well as that for which has
been bespoken that ill-advised notoriety which is but a spurious
equivalent for fame. . . . We cannot accept the successful
pattern where association and sentiment has been : forego
comedy and pathos, laughter and tears for a scientific adjust-
ment of yellow and of red. . . . That only the artist should write
on art by continued reiteration may convince the middle-class
public that has little of the instinct of art. But, sirs, not so
easily can you dispense with the services of Diderot and Ruskin."

Mr. Wedmore had either forgotten, or never heard of,
Cennini and Durer, Vasari and Cellini, Da Vinci and Reynolds,
and Fromentin, who remain, while Diderot and Ruskin
are discredited, if not actually forgotten as authorities
on art. He went on to regret that the originality of
Whistler's " painted work is somewhat apt to be dependent
on the innocent error that confuses the beginning with the
end." He disposed of the Portrait of Henry Irving as a
1879] 249

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

** murky caricature of Velasquez," of the Carlyle as a " doleful
canvas." He reduced the Nocturnes to " encouraging
sketches," as far as his eyes could be trusted, seeing in them

" an effect of harmonious decoration, so that a dozen or so of
them on the upper panels of a lofty chamber would afford even
to the wall-papers of William Morris a welcome and justifiable
alternative. . . . They suffer cruelly when placed against work
not, of course, of petty and mechanical finish, but of patient
achievement. But they have a merit of their own, and I do not
wish to understate it."

Whistler had " never mastered the subtleties of accurate
form " ; " the interest of life — the interest of humanity "
had little occupied him ; but Mr. Wedmore hoped that the
career, begun with promise, " might not close in work too
obstinately faithful to eccentric error." By his etchings,
his ndme might " aspire to live," though, " for his fame,
Mr. Whistler has etched too much, or at least has published
too much," though there is " commonness and vulgarity "
in many figures in the prints, though he " lacked the art,
the patience, or the will to continue " others.

" The Future will forget his disastrous Failures, to which in
the Present has somehow been accorded, through the activity
of Friendship, or the activity of enmity, a publicity rarely
bestowed upon failures at all."

In the same month, August 1879, another critic, an Ameri-
can, Mr. W. C. Brownell, published anonymously an article
on Whistler in Painting and Etching in Scribner's Monthly.
He treated Whistler and his work with a seriousness in
" significant " contrast to Wedmore's clumsy attempts at
flippancy. This was the first strong article in Whistler's
support, and it was illustrated by an extraordinary series
of wood-engravings after his pictures and prints. Amidst
250 [1879

THE GOLD SCAB, OR ERUPTION IN FRILTHY LUCRE

BANKRUPTCY

the torrent of sneers and abuse, it came at the moment when
Whistler most needed it.*

Whistler's financial affairs were in more hopeless confusion
than ever. The expenses of the White House were heavier
than he anticipated. The interference of the Metropolitan
Board of Works, to whom every drawing and plan had to
be submitted, resulted in delays, disagreements, alterations.
He made what concessions he could ; he even accepted the
stone mouldings insisted upon by the Board. The builder's
estimate was largely exceeded before the decorations
Boehm was to execute had been begun. He had brought
debts from Lindsey Row. The legends of them centre
about a greengrocer who is said to have let him run up
his bill for endless tomatoes and rare fruit out of season,
until it amounted to some six hundred pounds. When the
greengrocer insisted on payment, Whistler said :

" How — what — why — why, of course, you have sent these
things — most excellent things — and they have been eaten, you
know, by most excellent people. Think what a splendid ad-
vertisement. And sometimes, you know, the salads are not
quite up to the mark — the fruit, you know, not quite fresh.
And if you go into these unseemly discussions about the bill —
well, you know, I shall have to go into discussions about all this
— and think how it would hurt your reputation with all these
extraordinary people. I think the best thing is not to refer to
the past— I'll let it go. And in the future, we'll have a weekly
account — wiser, you know ! "

The greengrocer left without his money, but received in
payment two Nocturnes, one the blue upright Valparaiso.
Another story of the same creditor is that he followed Whistler
with his account to the White House, arriving as a grand
piano was being carried in. Whistler said he was so busy

* Perhaps it should be added that this first serious article on Whistler was by
no means taken seriously, and that the most was made of Mr. Brownell's mis-
take in describing the dry-point of Joe as a portrait of Dr. Whistler.
1879]

he couldn't attend to the matter just then, and the green-
grocer went away happy, thinking if grand pianos were
being bought, it must be all right.

Whistler used to say of stories told about him, that there
was always some foundation for them. The fact is that the
creditors in Lindsey Row had been many, though before
moving to Tite Street, he wrote hopefully to his mother at
Hastings of his economies, and his prospects for paying off
his debts. Whistler did not know the meaning of economy.
And the trial had to be paid for, the studio still waited for
pupils, his most important pictures were with Mr. Graves,
and no new commissions came. But, as far as he let the
world see, his troubles made no difference to him.

It was no unusual occurrence for bailiffs to be in possession
at the White House, or for bills to cover its walls. The first
time it happened, he told the people whom he invited that
they 'might know his house by the bills on it. Of the bailiffs
he made another " joy," a new feature of his Sunday break-
fasts. Mrs. Lynedoch Moncrieff has told us of a Sunday
when, to her surprise, two or three men waited at table with
Whistler's servant, John, and she said to Whistler :

" Why, Jimmie, I am glad to see you've grown so wealthy."
"Ha ha ! Bailiffs ! You know I had to put them to some
use ! "

Mr. W. M. Rossetti and his wife once found the same
" liveried attendants."

" ' Your servants seem to be extremely attentive, Mr. Whistler,
and anxious to please you,' one of the guests said. ' Oh, yes,'
was his answer, ' I assure you they wouldn't leave me.' '

Others remember the Sunday when all the furniture in
the house was numbered for a coming execution. When
breakfast was announced by a bailiff, Whistler said :

" They are wonderful fellows. You will see how excellently
252 [1879

BANKRUPTCY

they wait at table, and to-morrow, you know, if you want, you
can see them sell the chairs you sit on every bit as well. Amazing."

Mrs. Edwin Edwards wrote us that, when he had at one time
three men in possession, he treated them, while his friends
carted away his pictures from the back door. Other friends
say that the bailiffs, multiplied to seven, were invited into
the garden, and given beer " with a little something in it.'*
No sooner had they drunk of it than down went their heads
on the table round which they sat, and they slept. People
dining with Whistler that evening were taken into the garden
to see the seven sleepers of Ephesus : " stick pins in them,
shout in their ears — see — you can't wake them ! " All
evening it rained, and it snowed, and it thundered, and it
lightened, and it hailed. All night they slept. Morning
came and they slept. But just at the hour at which he had
given them their glass the day before, they all woke up and
asked for more.

The man who has bailiffs in his house because he cannot
pay his debts must still manage to pay them. One of the
" wonderful fellows " at the end of a week demanded his
money. Whistler answered :

" If I could afford to keep you, I would do without you."
"But what is to become of my wife and family, if I don't

get my wages ? "

" Ha ha ! You must ask those who sent you here to answer

that question."

" I assure you, Mr. Whistler, I need the money badly."

" Why not do as I do then, and have a man in yourself ? "

Whistler made a point of being courteous and attentive
to these gentlemen, for, " really, it was kind of them to see
to such tedious affairs." He asked the first bailiff whom
he encountered in his house, one evening when he returned
from the Arts Club :

" And how long will you remain ' the man in possession * ? "
1879] 253

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

" That, Mr. Whistler, depends on your paying Mr. 's bill."

" Awkward for me, but perhaps more so for you ! I hope
you won't mind it, though, you know, I fear your stay with me
will be a lengthy one. However, you will find it not entirely
unprofitable. For you will see and hear much that may be
useful to you later on ! "

When things got more desperate, bills covered the front
of the house, announcing the approaching sale. Whistler,
begging the bailiffs to make themselves at home, went off
one night to dine. It was a stormy night, and, returning
late, he found that the rain had washed loose some of the
bills, which were flapping in the wind. He woke up the
bailiffs, made them get a ladder, brought them into the
street, and insisted that every bill should be pasted down
in place again. He had allowed them, he said, to cover his
house with their posters, but, so long as he lived in it, no
man should leave it in a slovenly condition.

The crash came early in May 1879, and Whistler was
declared bankrupt. The amount of his liabilities was four
thousand six hundred and forty-one pounds, nine shillings
and three pence, according to Messrs. Waddell and Co.'s
statement of affairs, dated May 7, 1879. His assets were
estimated at one thousand eight hundred and twenty-four
pounds nine shillings and four pence, which was ultimately
increased by one hundred pounds. Among his debtors were
several friends, whom he urged to press their claims. In
his long overcoat, longer than ever, swinging his light, thin
cane, also lengthening in defiance, his hat set jauntily on the
black curls, he appeared at the office of one of these friends,
in the City, during business hours. " Ha ha ! " he laughed
as he came in. " Well, you know, here I am in the City !
Amazing." And he sat down and gossiped lightly. The
friend, knowing Whistler, knew something else must come of
the visit. And it came, but not before Whistler got up to go.
254 [1879

BANKRUPTCY

" You know, on the way, I dropped in to see George Lewis,
being in the neighbourhood, and, you know, ha ha ! he gave me
a paper for you to sign ! "

It was a petition in bankruptcy. The friend did not want
to sign ; he had lent Whistler money, but was in no hurry
to have it back. Whistler insisted, the friend could not
escape, and would have put down as small a sum as possible.
No, said Whistler, it must be for as much as possible, that
he might have the more influence in the proceedings. The
friend put down the exact amount, which was not large, and
Whistler sauntered away, as if he had no heavier care than
the fit of his coat and the weight of the cane he was swinging.

The meeting of the creditors was held at the Inns of Court
Hotel, a few weeks later, in June. Sir Thomas Sutherland
was in the chair, Whistler on one side, Sir George Lewis on
the other. To Leyland, with whom he had no " business
contract " for the Peacock Room, he attributed his bank-
ruptcy, and Leyland, therefore, was his scapegoat. Various
Chelsea tradesmen were also there. Except the solicitor,
they all seemed amateurs in matters of bankruptcy. Papers
were passed by the solicitor to the chairman, who endorsed
them. Not a word was said. At last, an impatient butcher,
or baker, springing up, moved that some explanation be
made to the creditors. Leyland seconded him. At that,
Whistler was on his feet, making a speech about plutocrats,
men with millions, and what he thought of them. Every-
body was stupefied ! No one knew what to do. With
difficulty, solicitor and chairman pulled him down into his
seat again. At the end of the meeting, debtor and creditors
appeared to understand as little as at the beginning. But
the law took its course. A committee of examiners was
appointed, composed of Leyland, the largest creditor, Howell,
and Mr. Thomas Way.

Leyland was not let off easily by Whistler. As Michael
1879] 255

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Angelo, painting the walls of the Sistine Chapel, plunged
the critic who had offended him into the depths of 'hell, so
Whistler on his canvas caricatured the man by whom he
thought himself wronged. He painted three pictures. The
first was The Loves of the Lobsters — an Arrangement in Rats,
the most prominent lobster in shirt-frills like Leyland.
" Whom the gods wish to make ridiculous, they furnish with
a frill ! " he said to his friends, and the saying was repeated,
until the chances are it reached Leyland, as he meant it
should. The second was Mount Ararat, a Noah's ark stranded
on a hill, with little figures approaching it, or perched on the
roof, all in the obnoxious frills. The third, the cruellest, was
The Gold Scab, or Eruption in Frilthy Lucre, a demon-like
creature, breaking out everywhere in a strange eruption of
golden sovereigns, wearing the now symbolic frill, seated on
the White House playing the piano. The hideousness of the
strange figure is more appalling because of the beauty of
colour, the decorative charm. A malicious joke begun in
anger, Mr. Arthur Symons has described it, from which
" beauty exudes like the scent of a poisonous flower." Whis-
tler's intention was that only these caricatures should be in
the studio when Leyland, with the committee of examiners,
made the official inspection. But in the meanwhile, they
were seen by everybody who came to the White House.
Mr. Augustus Hare wrote on May 13, 1879 :

" This morning I went with Mrs. Duncan Stewart and a very
large party to Whistler's studio — a huge place in Chelsea. We
were invited to see the pictures, but there was only one there,
The Loves of the Lobsters. It was supposed to represent Niagara,
and looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand, and left
Providence to work out its own results. In the midst of the
black chaos were two lobsters curvetting opposite each other,
and looking as if they were done with red sealing-wax. ' I
wonder you did not paint the lobsters making love before they
were boiled,' aptly observed a lady visitor. ' Oh, I never thought
256 [1879

BANKRUPTCY

of that,' said Whistler ! It was a joke, I suppose. The little
man, with his plume of white hair (' the Whistler tuft,' he calls
it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the room, looking most
strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over our
disappointment in coming so far and finding nothing to see.
People admire like sheep his pictures in the Grosvenor Gallery,
following each other's lead because it is the fashion."

As Whistler would be houseless in a few months, the old
plan for a journey to Venice was revived. Some years before,
Whistler told us, Mr. Ernest G. Brown, then a very young
man in the office of Messrs. Seeley and Co., had called on him
at 2 Lindsey Row to see about the Billingsgate plate. Whistler
made a deep impression on Mr. Brown, who could never
forget afterwards Whistler's taking him to the window, and
showing him the river, with Battersea beyond, or his talk
of its beauty. When Mr. Brown left Messrs. Seeley for the
Fine Art Society, he carried with him this impression of
Whistler, and through his persuasion the Society undertook
the publication of the three London plates. On business
connected with them Mr. Brown again came to see Whistler
at the White House. It was not long before the bankruptcy,
and Whistler said : " I am afraid I am going to lose my house,"
and then spoke of work at Venice he had long wanted to do.
Mr. Brown went back and discussed the matter with the
directors, so well that a commission was given to Whistler
for twelve plates to be made in Venice, and delivered to the
Society in three months' time.

By September 7 (1879), Whistler, " apparently in great
spirits," was " arranging his route to Venice " with Mr. Cole,
and announcing that " everything was to be sold up." The
receiver gave him permission to destroy unfinished work,
that it might not be displayed to the public. Copper
plates were scratched over, and pictures painted out
with gum, stripped off their stretchers, and rolled up.
1879] i:» 257

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

When next to nothing was left, he packed his trunks ;
wrote over his front door : " Except the Lord build the
house, their labour is but lost that build it. — E. W. Godwin,
F.S.A., built this one"; and started for Venice, his first
long journey since the voyage to Valparaiso.

The White House was sold on September 18, 1879 to Mr.
Harry Quilter, who paid for it two thousand seven hundred
pounds in money at the time, and later on in Whistler's
endless jests at his expense. The public jeered as usual.
The contents of the White House, the Figaro (September
1879) said,

" revealed a list of effects that even a broker's man would turn
up his nose at, and if ever the ' seamy side ' of a fashionable
artist's existence was shown, it was during that auction in Cheyne
Walk, Chelsea. . . . Truly, if Mr. Ruskin had wished to have
his revenge, he might have enjoyed it to an unlimited extent
at the White House, when his prosecutor's specially built-to-
order abode was characterised as a disgrace to the neighbourhood
by Philistinic spectators, and its contents supplied material for
the rude jokes of Hebrew brokers, and the special correspondent
of the Echo"

" Two wooden spoons, a rusty knife handle and two empty
oil tins," was one of the " lots " described for the delectation
of the public. Everything was sacrificed and thrown away.
Bundles of rubbish were carried off for a few shillings, and
not even their purchasers dreamt that they would prove
worth thousands of pounds if ever again they appeared in
the saleroom. Out of this " rubbish " came the beautiful
studies for the Six Projects, an unfinished Valparaiso, the
Cremorne Gardens shown at the London Memorial Exhibition,
the portrait of Miss Way and The Blue Girl, the portrait of
Miss Elinor Leyland, in such a deplorable condition that
nothing now remains but the two blue pots of flowers which
stood on either side the figure. Mr. Thomas Way bought
258 [1879

STUDY FOR "CONNIE GILCHRIST'

CONNIE GILCHKIST
(Harmony in Yellow and Gold, The Gold Girl)

BANKRUPTCY

The Lobsters and Mount Ararat, and they have passed into
the possession of Mr. Freer.

Whistler's china, his prints, and some of his pictures were
reserved for a sale at Sotheby's, on Thursday, February 12,
1880, when Whistler had been in Venice for some few months
already. The title-page of the catalogue gives a good idea
of what there was to sell : " In Liquidation. By Order of
the Trustees of J. A. McN. Whistler. Catalogue of the
Decorative Porcelain, Cabinets, Paintings, and other Works
of Art of J. A. McN. Whistler. Received from the White
House, Fulham, comprising Numerous Pieces of Blue and
White China ; the Painting in Oil of Connie Gilchrist Dancing
with a Skipping Rope, styled A Girl in Gold, by Whistler ;
A Satirical Painting of a Gentleman, styled The Creditor, by
Whistler. Crayon Drawings and Etchings, Cabinets, and
Miscellaneous Articles." When Leyland learned that the
Gold Scab, masquerading as The Creditor, was to be included
in the sale, it is said he proposed to take legal measures to
have it removed.

Several of Whistler's friends and the dealers who bought
his work were present. Mr. Way, Oscar Wilde, the Fine
Art Society, Messrs. Dowdeswell, Mr. Mitford, Mr. Deschamps,
Mr. Flower and Howell were the principal purchasers of the
blue and white, the glass and the bronzes. Howell secured
the Japanese screen that is the background for the Princesse
du Pays de la Porcelaine. The Japanese bath fell to Mr.
Jarvis. The Creditor, the " Satirical Portrait," was bought
by Messrs. Dowdeswell for twelve guineas. The picture
disappeared after this, but it turned up in the King's Road,
Chelsea, years later, and was purchased by Mr. G. P. Jacomb-
Hood. It has since been exhibited at the Goupil Gallery,
when one of the serious new critics regretted that Whistler
should have allowed himself to be influenced by Beardsley.
Connie Gilchrist Dancing with a Skipping Rope was sold to
1879] 259

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Mr. Wilkinson for fifty guineas. Whistler's bust, by Boehm,
was bought by Mr. Way for six guineas. A crayon sketch,
catalogued as a portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, was knocked
down for five guineas to Oscar Wilde, who asked her to sign
it, which she did, writing also that it was very like her. It
might have been handed down as her portrait for ever, had
it not been bought up at Oscar Wilde's sale, and found its
way back to Whistler, who declared that Madame Bern-
hardt never sat to him for that, or any other, portrait. The
sale at Sotheby's realised three hundred and twenty-eight
pounds, nineteen shillings, and did not take up the whole of
the auctioneer's day.

260 [1879

CHAPTER XXI. VENICE. THE YEAR
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY

WHISTLER'S work during his fourteen months in Venice
is better known than any he ever did. He showed
much of it as soon as he returned to London, and the rest,
although not exhibited until later, can easily be identified,
as his subjects were entirely Venetian and this was his
only visit to Venice. But his life there has become more
or less of a legend. There is one person, Maud Franklin,
who could tell the whole truth, and she prefers to remain
silent. Many people, still alive, were with him in Venice, but
their memories are vague. And yet to-day, when two or three
artists gather together of an evening at Florian's, or the
Quadri, or the Orientale, it is of Whistler they talk. When
the prize student arrives and has sufficiently raved, they say,
" Oh, yes, but you will have to do it better than Whistler ! "
When a new discoverer of the picturesque brags, Whistler's
old friends tell him of Whistler's discovery of " a court-
yard, you know, that no one has ever seen, a most wonderful
courtyard, amazing ! " and of Whistler's offer to show it to
them, though they knew Venice, and he did not as yet. And
the next morning, he took them to it, and when they got
there, Meissonier sat on one side and Miss Montalba on the
other, Henry Woods in one corner, and Van Haanen opposite,
while in the centre, in the high light was Leighton. It
was the Abazzia. " Yes, this subject is No. 78," they said.
For years Whistler had wanted to do a series of Venetian
1879] 261

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

etchings, but scarcely was he in Venice before he found it
no place for work. The winter was fearfully cold : there
had been nothing like it for thirty years, and he always felt
the cold intensely. He could not keep warm, and he suffered
from the discomfort of the Venetian houses. It is almost
impossible to hold a copper plate or a needle with numbed
fingers, and Venice in ice made him long for London in fog.
He wrote home that he would gladly have exchanged the
square of St. Mark's for Piccadilly, his gondola for a hansom.
It is curious that Ruskin, in a letter to Rogers, from Venice,
twenty-eight years before, compared " the Canal with
Piccadilly," questioning " whether, for the rest of one's life
one would rather have a gondola within call or a hansom."
Affairs in London continued to worry Whistler. He could
not trace pictures that had mysteriously vanished, everything
was in confusion ; even his private letters and business
correspondence turned up unaccountably in second-hand
bookshops.* He was ill for a while with a bad throat,
and his brother, the Doctor, was far away. And Venice
was new to Whistler. In the beginning it seemed to him
to belong to the land of the opera comique, as Spain had
on his one visit there years before. He found the very
language disappointing, not to be compared to Spanish.
Venice was beautiful, he granted, most beautiful, perhaps,
in the rain, or, " after the wet," when, as he wrote to his
mother, with the colour and the reflections more gorgeous
than ever, and "with the sun shining upon the polished
marble, mingled with rich -toned bricks and plaster," one
might think this city of palaces had been created for the
painter. But it took him some time to become familiar
with the beauty. Mr. Otto Bacher, one of the group of
American artists who followed Mr. Frank Duveneck from

* It is said that even letters written as a child to his mother were found
there.

262 [1879

VENICE

Venice in 1880, tells of visits to the Scuola di San Rocco,
of his climbing up for a closer look at the Tintoretto, of his
delight because the technique of that master coincided with
lys own ; Veronese and Titian he thought " great swells,"
and Canaletto and Guardi, great masters. He went to St.
Mark's for midnight Mass on the one Christmas he spent in
Venice, and declared that the Peacock Room, with the delicate
harmony of its ceiling, was more splendid in effect than the
Byzantine church with its golden domes. Years before,
he had written to Fantin that it was a mistake, a waste of
time, for the artist to go in search of new subjects, and
during the early months in Venice, the new subject was
probably as much a difficulty as the winter days. Countess
Rucellai, then Miss Edith Bronson, writes us that

" he used to say Venice was an impossible place to sit down
and sketch in — he always felt ' there was something still better
round the^'corner.' '

Mr. Henry Woods has told us how, at first, he was continually
wandering and looking among the endless mass of material
for some inspiring motive. Mr. Woods was nearer Whistler's
age than many of the artists in Venice, and not susceptible
to Whistler's influence, but he remembers that Whistler, no
matter how much he wandered, and how completely he
appeared to be loafing, when he did find a subject, worked
with a determination that no cold and cheerlessness could
daunt. Mr. Woods writes us :

," I remember his remarkable energy — and actual suffering —
when doing those beautiful pastels, nearly all done during the
coldest winter I have known in Venice, and mostly towards
evening, when the cold was bitterest ! He soon found out the
beautiful quality of colour there is here before sunset in winter.
No mistake about it, he had a strong constitution. He was
only unwell once here, and with a bad cold only."

The Fine Art Society had asked him to make twelve
1879] 263

plates, and to deliver them in three months. To Whistler,
the quality of his work alone was of importance. The
plates were not started for months after he got to Venice,
though the Fine Art Society were continually demanding
from him some sign of what he was doing. The answer he
made was at first silence, and then to ask for more money.
The Fine Art Society, he explained to us, were used to
artists who agreed to definite terms and kept to the agree-
ment. They began to have their doubts, and, at any sug-
gestion of doubt, Whistler was furious. Then reports came
to them that he was doing many things, and that he was
working on enormous plates they had never ordered.
Howell and others would say that Whistler, of course,
would never come back, and when Academicians laughed
at the very idea of their getting either plates or their
money from such a " charlatan," they would write to him
again. With each new suggestion of doubt or uncertainty
on their part, Whistler's fury grew. This was the great
cause of the trouble between him and the Society.
" Amazing," their letters and his, Whistler used to say,
" but, perhaps, not for the public." The only reason for
the delay was his fastidiousness about his own work.
Even Frank Duveneck, most procrastinating of mortals,
had time to produce his series of Venetian etchings, and
Otto Bacher to change his style and make his Venetian
plates, before Whistler had found his subjects.

When at last he got to work, he worked unceasingly.
It amused him to shock the American Consul by saying that
idleness is the virtue of the artist, but it was a virtue he
denied himself. He was up early in the morning, at half-
past six. He never stopped while there was light or an
effect. He could not be dragged to dinner before dark —
he could scarcely keep his eyes open in the evening from
fatigue. It was " the same old story " he told his mother ;
264 [1879

THE BASE OF THE TOWER, VENICE

(Pastel)

VENICE

" I am at my work the first thing at dawn and the last
thing at night." He could stand the Venetian crowd no
better than any one else, and he worked as much as
possible out of the windows. He did comparatively little
from gondola or sandola. To the tourist, a gondola is a
thing of joy ; to the worker, it is a terribly unstable, un-
satisfactory studio, and even in the old days it cost a hundred
francs a month, but then, the gondolier was your slave. In
choosing his subjects, he usually left the monuments of
Venice, as of London, alone. In London he preferred
Battersea and Wapping to Westminster and St. Paul's ;
in Venice little canals and calli, old doorways and gar-
dens, beggars and bridges made a stronger appeal to him
than churches and palaces, though there is the fine
Nocturne of St. Mark's, as well as a few other exceptions.
His interest was in the Venice of the Venetians as he
saw it. M. Duret thinks he deliberately avoided subjects
that Guardi and Canaletto had made their own, the great
square with the Ducal Palace, the Cathedral, the Campanile.
But subjects such as these, Whistler, as a rule, avoided
everywhere. He was afterwards reproached for having
turned his back upon the architectural glory of Venice. To
reproduce the masterpieces of the master, he said, would
be an impertinence.

Some say that Whistler first took rooms at the top of the
Palazzo Rezzonico, the palace now owned by Mr. Barrett
Browning. Mr. Ralph Curtis, who lived in Venice, thinks
that " for a time Whistler had, as many did, one of the big
rooms on the second floor of the Rezzonico as a studio."
His only etching in the immediate neighbourhood is The
Palaces made, not from an upper window, but from a traghetto,
or the end of a near calle. Had he had rooms or a studio
in the upper stories, there would most likely be some record
of it from the windows. Mr. Brooks, also in Venice at the
1879] 265

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

time, assures us that Whistler never lived there, and describes
a little house in the heart of Venice, where " Maud " was
with him, and where he started to paint a picture of a gon-
dolier, who fell ill, which was a great blow to him. The
doctor put the gondolier to bed, and bled him for pneumonia ;
Whistler came in and took heroic measures : milk punch
and open windows. But the cure was slow. Whistler had
to wait, and probably he never touched the canvas again.
Mr. Otto Bacher writes of his quarters on the opposite side
of the Grand Canal near the Frari. Mr. Bacher had arrived
with Duveneck's other pupils in the summer of 1880, and
he recalls his first impression of Whistler at the time :

" a curious, sailor-like stranger . . . short, thin and wiry, with
a head that seemed large and out of proportion to the lithe figure.
His large, wide-brimmed, soft, brown hat was tilted far back,
and suggested a brown halo. It was a background for his curly
black hair and singular white lock, high over his right eye, like
a fluffy feather carelessly left where it had lodged. A dark,
sack-coat almost covered an extremely low turned-down collar,
while a narrow black ribbon did service as a tie, the long pennant-
like ends of which, flapping about, now and then hit his single
eye-glass."

Mr. Bacher also describes Whistler in evening dress with no
tie at all : the peculiarity with which, of recent years, he
had startled London. Mr. Brooks recalls his coming without
one to the Bronsons where they met constantly, and Bronson
saying it was sad to see artists so poor that they could not
afford a necktie. We never knew Whistler, in the many
years of our intimacy, to speak of himself as " Whistler,"
though Mr. Bacher makes him substitute " Whistler " for
" I " in almost all their talks. So foolish an affectation
seems to us little like Whistler.

Several of Duveneck's pupils were living in the Casa
Jankovitz, the house that juts out squarely at the lower end
266 [1880

VENICE

of the Riva degli Schiavoni, all Venice in front of it. Whistler
was enchanted, and promptly moved there. He had one
room, the two windows looking towards San Giorgio, the
Salute and the Doge's Palace, and from these the etchings
of the Riva and the lagoon, and the pastels of the same
subjects were made. Many things are told of this one room
in the Casa Jankovitz, of plates bitten on the top of the
bureau, and acid running off, and the wild scramble to save
his shirts from being ruined in the drawers beneath. Others,
all true, are of the old printing press, on which Canaletto's
plates were supposed to have been pulled and certainly
many of Duveneck's and Bacher's were : the press which
used to pull with difficulty up to a certain point, and then
went with such a rush that it had to be stopped, for fear the
bed would come out on the floor.

By this time he had found friends and enemies. There
was a large colony of foreign artists and art lovers in Venice,
and there was a club, English in name, really cosmopolitan,
where he met Rico, Roussoff, Van Haanen, Tito, Blaas, if
he had not already met them on the Piazza. Alexander,
Rolshoven, as well as Bacher, among others, were with
Duveneck. Harper Pennington joined them in the autumn,
and Scott, Blum, Bunney, Jobbins, and Logsdail were at
work. The American Consul, Mr. Grist, and the Vice-
Consul, Mr. Graham, were persons of importance, and the
Consulate then, as ever, a meeting-place. Mrs. Bronson
lived in the Casa Alvisi, the Brownings and the Curtises were
in Venice, and with all three families Whistler became
intimate. Londoners sometimes turned up. Mr. Harry
Quilter tells of one encounter :

" In the spring of 1880, I was, as usual in those days, in Italy,

and spent a few weeks in Venice. I had been drawing for about

five daj'S, in one of the back canals, a specially beautiful doorway,

when one morning I heard a sort of war-whoop, and there was

1880] 267

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Whistler, in a gondola, close by, shouting out, as nearly as I
can remember : ' Hi ! hi ! What, what ! Here, I say, you've
got my doorway ! ' — ' Your doorway ? Confound your doorway !
I replied, ' It's my doorway, I've been here for the last week.' —
' I don't care a straw, I found it out first. I got that grating put
up.' — ' Very much obliged to you, I'm sure : it's very nice. It
was very good of you.' And so for a few minutes we wrangled,
but, seeing that the canal was very narrow, and that there was
no room for two gondolas to be moored in front of the chosen
spot, mine being already tied up exactly opposite, I asked him
if he would not come and work in my gondola. He did so, and,
I am bound to say, turned the tables on me cleverly. For,
pretending not to know who I was, he described me to myself,
and recounted the iniquities of the art critic of the Times, one
' 'Arry Quilter.' "

Whistler's struggle for bare existence and his pluck, are
remembered by many. He was always poor at Venice, Mr.
Brooks has told us, always borrowing money, and there
was a very bad moment, when he used to say he had to live
on " cat's meat and cheese parings." But even while gossip
of his poverty was spreading there were dinners and Sunday
breakfasts. Many were given in a little open-air trattoria,
near the Via Garibaldi. The Panada, that noisiest of all
noisy restaurants, was another of his haunts, and some of
the men who were in Venice speak of a third, opposite the
old post office. The Venetian food, nothing but fowl, as he
described it to Mrs. William Whistler, tired him at first so much
that he surprised himself by spending what seemed a fortune
on tea, and carrying home strange pieces of fat, which he
tried to boil into resemblance of the crisp slices of bacon
served by Mrs. Cossens, his Chelsea housekeeper. Mr. Curtis
remembers dinners in Whistler's rooms, so does Mr. Scott :

" If Whistler could not lay a table, he knew how to turn out

tasty little dishes over a spirit-lamp ; and it was not long before

the inevitable Sunday breakfasts were instituted in that little

room. Polenta & VAmericaine, which he had induced the land-

268 [1880

CALLE, VKXICK

( I'astel)

VENICE

lady to prepare under his direction, we used to eat with such
sort of treacle, alias golden syrup, as could be obtained. Fish
was cheaper and more plentiful then than now in the Water City,
and the lanky serving- women could fry with the best of the famous
Ciozzotte. The ' thin red wine ' of the country, in large flasks
at about sixpence a quart, was plentiful, and these simple things,
with the accompanying ' flow of soul,' made a feast for the gods.
There was no room for many guests at one time, but Henry
Woods, Ruben, W. Graham, Butler and Roussoff were often
with us."

Days were spent in excursions to the Lido, and, doubtless,
Chioggia, Murano, Burano and Torcello. These little jour-
neys were far more costly and difficult then than now, and
there are no plates except the Murano Glass Furnace, and no
pastels, except one or two on the Lido, to show for them.

Best of all Whistler loved the nights at the never-closed
-clubs in the Piazza, at Florian's, and the Quadri, or some-
times at the Orientale on the Riva, where the coffee was just
as good, and two centessimi cheaper. Around these nights
endless legends are growing, and like the legends everywhere
else, they are such a part of Whistler they cannot be passed
over. No one loved them better than he, no one ever told
them so well. They became the favourite " yarns " of
Duveneck's " boys," to which we listened many an evening
when we came to Venice four years later. It was then we
first heard of Wolkoff, or Roussoff as he is known in Bond
Street, and his boast that he could make pastels so like
Whistler's that the difference could not be detected, and
the American's bet of a " champagne dinner " that he
couldn't, and the evening in the Casa Jankovitz, when Rico,
Duveneck, Curtis, Bacher, Woods, Van Haanen, and De
Blaas recognised Wolkoff 's work at a glance, and every time
one of his pastels was produced, cried in one voice : " Take
it away ! " The Russian said to Whistler after the dinner :
" You know, you scratch a Russian, and you find a Tartar ! "
i860] 269

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

— " Ha ha ! " said Whistler, " I've scratched an artist and
found an ama-Tartar ! " Another " yarn " was of the tiny
glass figure, or maybe, a little black baby from the shrine
of St. Anthony in Padua, dropped into Whistler's glass of
water where it looked like a little devil bobbing up and
down, so that Whistler, when he saw it, thought something
might be wrong with his eyes, and sipped the water and
shook the glass, and the more he sipped and shook, the more
the little devil danced, and, finally, he upset the glass over
everybody, and the little demon fell in his own lap. And
there was another, of the night when a gondola, with a trans-
parency showing Nocturnes and a band playing " Yankee-
doodle," moved up and down the Grand Canal and along
the Riva, and never stopped until it was greeted with a loud
" Ha ha ! " from out the darkness of the shore. And we
heard of the day when Whistler, seeing Bunney on a scaffold
struggling with St. Mark's, his life work for Ruskin, fastened
a card, " I am totally blind," on his back. And we were
told too of the hot noon, when Whistler, leaning out of his
window, discovered a bowl of goldfish far below on the
window-ledge of his landlady, against whom he had an old
grudge, let down a fishing-line, caught the goldfish, fried
them, dropped them back into the bowl, and watched the
return of their owner, who thought that her fish had been
fried by the heat of the sun. Or it was the story of Blum
and Whistler, without a scat, crossing the Academy Bridge,
Blum sticking in his eye a little watch with a split second
hand that went round so fast the keeper thought he had
an " evil eye," and they got over without paying ; or of the
" boys' " " farewell fete " to Whistler in August when there
was rumour of his going, and in the coal barge, which Mr.
Bacher's description transforms into a " fairy-like floating
bower festooned with the wealth of autumn," the feast of
melons and salads and Chianti was spread, and eaten as they
270 [1880

VENICE

went up the Grand Canal with the tide, and the brilliancy
of their Japanese lanterns brought every one to stare at
them, until the rain drove them under the Rialto where
the rest of the night was spent, and Whistler didn't go after
all. When Whistler was really leaving, they say that he
asked the authors of these and many adventures up to his
room and showed them a number of prints, and said : " Now
you boys have been very good to me during all this time,
and I want to do something for you " ; and then he turned
over the prints, one at a time carefully, and said : " and
I have thought it out " ; and he took one, a spoiled one,
and he counted their heads, and he cut it into as many pieces
as there were people, and solemnly presented a fragment
to each, and as they marched downstairs, all they heard was
" Ha ha ! " These, and hundreds like them, are the legends
you still listen to on the Piazza.

But Whistler left more than the memory of his gaiety
with the friends he made in Venice. Two, Mr. Harper
Pennington and Mr. Ralph Curtis, have sent us their im-
pressions which we give here, without change or omission,
though Mr. Curtis' letter does not end with the Venetian
days. But to change or to omit would be to lessen the
vividness of the impression.

Mr. Harper Pennington writes us :

" You know, he asked me to turn back when I was in Venice
(for the first time, in September 1880), and come with him to
London. I told him that I was not yet prepared for such a
master : that I needed two years more, at least, to learn the
mere dull rudiments, and to become familiar with everything
I should avoid. ' Perhaps you are right,' he said reflectively,
and very slowly, " but come to me by-and-by — don't put it off
too long ! ' He gave me many lessons there in Venice — real ones.
He would hook his arm in mine, and take me off to look at some
Nocturnes that he was studying or memorising, and then he would
show me how he went about to paint it, in the daytime. He let
1880] 271

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

me — invited me, indeed, to stand at his elbow as he set down
in colour some effect he loved from the natural thing in front of us.
What became of many such — small canvases, all of them — I do
not know. The St. George Nocturne, Canfield has. Who owns
The Facade of San Marco ? *

" There was an upright sunset, too, looking from my little
terrace on the Riva degli Schiavoni over towards San Giorgio
— or others that I saw him work on in 1880. At last, my two
years in Italy gone by, and a season in the studio of Carolus
Duran superimposed, to find out his cuisine, I went to look for
Jimmy in London, found him, and said : ' Here I am ! ' "

Mr. Curtis gives details of another kind :

" You do me the honour of asking for my ' impressions ' of
Whistler. Off and on, for about twenty years, I had the good
fortune of seeing him rather intimately in London, Paris and
Venice. Those twenty years covered a multitude of vicissitudes
in his career — semi-successes and partial defeats in London —
his renaissance in Italy, his reinstalment in England, his coro-
nation in Paris, and one may almost say his subsequent deification
by eVery European denomination of the cult of art. Malheur,
bonheur, Whistler conceding nothing — his attitude to art, to
himself, to the public, and to his rivals, past and living, never
changed. Applauded or booed, he ever remained with the same
high aesthetic ideals, and the same shrewd eye to business. A
rare combination. To us humble apostles of this faith, the master
always seemed an ultra-exclusive aristocrat. In the Gotha of
royalties of the profession, picturesquely few did he deign to
recognise as ' brothers.' This ultra-fastidiousness was sincere.
It also included, possibly, sentiments of self-defence — a sort of
Monroe doctrine !

" Too self-reliant to be really jealous, he nevertheless constantly
cultivated diplomacy. And hi the broadest and best sense
Whistler was a man of the world. For example, after the opening
soiree of an International group at the Rue de Seze, all but one
of the exhibiting artists were standing about, Whistler seated,
and punctuating his wit with flourishes of his famous wand,
when the belated member stumbled in from a too good supper,
and ventured j ' Ah, te voila, mon vieux. On pent faire le charlatan

* Mr. J. J. Cowan.
272 [1880

VENICE

d Londres, mais id, tu sais, qa ne prendra pas.'' General consterna-
tion was relieved by the self-restrained reply : ' Ecoutez-moi bien,
monsieur — dans mes voyages fai ton jours remarque, dans tons les
pays, que les gentilshommes se grisent en gentilshommes, et les
voyous en voyous. Allez, allez' (with a wave of the wand).
The blasphemer was hurried away, and the incident closed.

" Shortly before his return to England with portfolios of the
famous etchings and delicious pastels, he gave his friends a tea-
dinner. As seeing the best of his Venetian work was the real
feast, the hour for the hors d'oeuvres, consisting of sardines, hard-
boiled eggs, fruit, cigarettes, and excellent coffee prepared by
the ever-admirable Maud, was arranged for six o'clock. Effective
pauses succeeded the presentation of each masterpiece, for with
Japanese precision they had to be most carefully fixed in the
one mount available. During these entr'actes, Whistler amused
his guests with witty conjectures as to the verdict of the grave
critics in London on ' these things.' One of his favourite types
for sarcasm used to be the eminently respectable Londoner,
who is ' always called at 8.30, close-shaved at quarter to 9, and
in the City at 10.' ' What will he make of this ? Serve him
right, too. Ha ha ! '

" Whistler was a constant and ever- welcome guest at Casa
Alvisi, the hospitable house of Mrs. Bronson, whom he often
called Santa Cattarina Seconda. During happy years, from
lunch till long past bed-time her house was the open rendezvous
for the rich and poor — the famous and the famished — les rois
en exil and the heirs-presumptive to the thrones of fame. Whistler
there had his seat from the first, but to the delight of all he
generally held the floor. One night, a curious contrast was the
great and genial Robert Browning commenting on the projected
form of a famous ' Jimmy letter ' to the World. Those little
arrows of wit, poisoned with veritable hellebore of sarcasm, were
the result of infinite pains of gestation, pondered over, reforged,
polished, and sharpened to the keenest edge. They might,
better than by the Butterfly, have been signed by the symbol
of the Wasp !

" Very late, on hot sirocco nights, long after the concert crowd
had dispersed, one little knot of men might often be seen in the
deserted Piazza San Marco, sipping refreshment in front of
Florian's. You might be sure that was Whistler, in white duck,
praising France, abusing England, and thoroughly enjoying
1 880] i : s 273

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Italy. He was telling how he had seen painting in Paris revolu-
tionised by innovators of ' powerful handling ' : Manet, Courbet,
Vollon, Regnault, Carolus Duran. He felt far more enthusiasm
for the then recently resuscitated popularity of Velasquez and
Hals.

" The ars celare artem of Terborgh and Vermeer always delighted
him — the mysterious technique, the discreet distinction of exe-
cution, the ' one skin all over it,' of the minor masters of Holland
was one of his eloquent themes. To Whistler it was a treat
when a Frenchman arrived in Venice. If he could not like his
paint, he certainly enjoyed his language. French seemed to
give him extra exhilaration. From beginning to end, he owed
much to the French for first recognising what he had learned
from Japan.

" Was Whistler not the pioneer to graft on to the tired stump
of Europe the vital shoots of Oriental Art ? From Hiroshige
especially he appears to have assimilated those nicely weighed
laws of balance in design, the tender chord of colour and un-
conventional arrangements which have long since become
vulgarised — even to the posters of Vart nouveau.

" Some Japanese delight in Whistler's tonalities, but are
reserved as to the timidity of his drawing — innately sensitive
to the fine beauty of line-rhythm in general composition, can
we contend that he was often an accomplished draughtsman of
detail ? It is admitted that Whistler felt as few the supreme
effect of an elegant silhouette, but it was only after hard work
that he ever attained the purity of detail contour he so patiently
aimed at. Witness the legs in the portrait of little Miss Alexander,
which, nevertheless, posterity will perhaps pronounce his most
perfect masterpiece.

" To continental comrades the American's mentality seemed
far more Gallic than Anglo-Saxon — Parisians loved equally his
sense of humour and his bump of combativity. They also
relished his shafts of revenge at the artistic pretensions of the
English, as compared with the national instincts of the French.
Except for his exaggerated attitude during the Boer War, this
revenge was atoned for by his equally deep gratitude to Paris,
where, as a boy, his qualities had been at once recognised, and
though he made, and lost, friends, money and notoriety in
London, it was again Paris which gave him his official diplomas
as one of the very greatest men of the day.
274 [1880

VENICE

" Already posterity has corrected its rough proofs, and Whistler
is henceforth classed as a classic. His delicate sense of order,
proportion and spacing in pictorial composition was consistently
carried out in the tidiness of all his surroundings and in the
quaint coquetry of his dress, while even his most informal notes
were invariably models of precise execution. Later, as a printer,
he showed positive genius in personally supervising to the smallest
minutiae the perfect presentation of his literary work, which
remains, we are told, a model of faultless taste — Taste is prob-
ably the epitaph he himself would prefer. And by that hack-
neyed word, meaning perhaps the rarest quality in modern life,
Whistler, of all others, seems unreservedly entitled to be charac-
terised."

1880] 275

CHAPTER XXII. VENICE. THE YEAR
EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY CONTINUED

in the various phases of Whistler's art is more
astonishing than the storm of praise and abuse raised
by the Venetian pastels, as will be seen when we come to
their exhibition in London. Before this, when they were
being done in Venice, the entire artistic community fought
over them, for and against. To some, they were perfectly
original, they expressed the character of Venice ; to others,
they appeared cheap, anybody could do them. Both sides
were wrong, as both sides always were about Whistler.
"Anybody" cannot do them, and he had been making
drawings of the kind ever since, if not before, the early
days in Chelsea ; the subject, not the method, was new to
him. Had some of the enthusiasts visited the collection
of drawings in the Academy at Venice, they might have
discovered his inspiration in the drawings of the Old
Masters, where Whistler had found it years before at the
Louvre. He was, as usual, inventing nothing, only carrying
on tradition.

The method was simple. He drew on brown paper,
sometimes taken from the grocer's or the colourman's parcel,
putting in the composition with black chalk, and adding a
few touches of colour. In this way, he made his studies for
his pictures, especially for his classical subjects in the 'sixties,
and a great number were in the possession of Mr. Thomas
Way. The design for the mosaic for South Kensington, notes
276 [1880

VENICE

of costumes for his sitters, decorative schemes, and scores
of other subjects, many forgotten by him though they filled
a large cabinet in the studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-
Champs, and another in Fitzroy Street, were all done ten
or fifteen years before he went to Venice. We do not know
whether the little Chelsea shops belong to a later period.
But to the day of his death he never gave up the method,
and in his colour lithographs, he carried out the same idea.
The early sketches on brown paper were mostly not known
until the Memorial Exhibitions of his work. The few pre-
viously shown in London had attracted so little attention
that he was generally believed to have taken up pastel in
Venice, and to have made his wonderful drawings there
without any technical preparation.

There were two reasons why Whistler used coloured
papers for the pastels. One was that they gave him,
without any work at all, the foundation of a colour-
scheme which could be carried out in the simplest manner
in the black chalk outline, and the few touches of pastel
that completed the harmony. The other reason was that,
having the sympathetic colour of the paper, he worked
straight away on it, and did not ruin the surface and tire
himself in getting the tone. When in Venice, Mr. Jobbing
showed him some beautiful old brown, blue and pink paper,
found in an old warehouse just off the Merceria, since cleared
out, Whistler was completely equipped, not only with ex-
perience, but with better materials than he ever had before.
It was natural that he should get to work in the way he had
made his own. Mr. Bacher describes him in his gondola
laden with pastels. But his materials were so few that,
with them, he could wander on foot in the narrow
streets, the best way to work, as every one who has lived in
Venice knows. For it is far from easy to find again a place
come upon by chance, and it is virtually impossible ever to
1880] 277

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

see again the effect that has fascinated you. He carried
only a little portfolio or drawing-board, some sheets of
tinted paper, black chalk, half a dozen pastels, and varnished
or silver-coated paper to place over the drawing, when
finished. When he once found what he wanted, he made
his sketch in black chalk, and then just hinted, but beauti-
fully, the colour of the old walls, the green shutters, the
brilliant spots of the women's dresses : the colour put in
as in a mosaic or stained glass, mostly a flat tint, the pastel
between the black lines. He always remembered the limita-
tions of the medium and never attempted to paint with his
stick of colour, using greater pressure to obtain greater
brilliancy and less for his more delicate tones, but keeping
his colour pure and fresh, as you can see in the " foolish
sunsets " he sometimes did in Venice, though rarely after-
ward. The surprise was that it could be so simple, so easy
— " only the doing it was the difficulty," he would say. It
is doubtful if he ever worked more than a day on any one
subject. It is almost certain that he finished each before
he left the place. People were not often given the chance to
learn much about Whistler's methods, or to know what he
was doing. But when he finished a series of these Venetian
drawings, the fact did become known, and he gave an ex-
hibition of them in the club at Venice. He showed them
also at Mrs. Bronson's, and in his room. After the Sunday
breakfast, Mr. Scott writes :

" The latest pastels used to be brought out for inspection.
Whistler would always show his sketches in his own way, or
not at all. In the absence of a proper easel and a proper light,
they were usually laid on the floor."

The " painter fellows " were startled by the brilliancy of
the pastels, Whistler said, and he told his mother that he
thought rather well of them himself.

The drawing in many has been praised with the reckless
278 [1880

MAKBLE PALACE, VEXICK
(Pastel)

VENICE

inconsequence characteristic of most of the praise bestowed
on Whistler's work. The drawing is often either not good
in itself, or so slight as to be of little importance. The
beauty is altogether in the suggestion of colour, the arrange-
ment of lines that he hints at. It is all suggestion. Though
he passed the spring, summer, winter, and part of two
autumns in the city, there is no attempt, save in some of
the sunsets, to give atmospheric effects, or the effect of the
season, of the time of the year. What he saw that pastel
would do, what he made it do, was to record certain lines
and to suggest certain colours. Critics and artists, having
at that time never studied pastel, were unaware of what had
been done in the medium. In fact, the revival in the art
of drawing in pastel did not come for some years after
Whistler showed his Venetian series, when there was a
" boom " all over the world, and pastel societies were started,
most of which have since collapsed.

The " boom " in etching commenced ten or twelve years
before Whistler went to Venice. If nothing was known
till then of the possibilities of etching, much was known of
its history. There were accepted standards: Rembrandt,
Haden, Meryon. Whistler had already accomplished great
things, done after a more or less definite formula laid down
by Diirer, Rembrandt and Hollar. Therefore, when he
produced etchings which struck the uncritical, and even
those who cared, as something new and untried, the un-
critical were shocked because their preconceived notions
were upset, and those who cared were astonished. The
difference between the Venetian and the London plates was,
Mr. Duret says, so great that the two series might be attri-
buted to two men. This was due partly to the difference
between London and Venice seen by an artist sensitive to
the character of places, but more to the difference of tech-
nique between the earlier and the later plates. Not so

1880] 279

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

many years ago, talking to him about this subject, we said
that the Venetian plates seemed to be executed in an
absolutely new and original technique. It so happened that
the Adam and Eve, Old Chelsea, and The Traghetto were, as
they are now, hanging almost side by side on our walls.
In a five minutes' demonstration he proved one to be but
the outgrowth of the other, and had he carried the demon-
stration further back, he could have proved that both, as
we can now see, grew out of The Coast Survey plate, and that
there was a natural and logical growth all the way through.
Until the London Memorial Exhibition of his work, it was
impossible to trace this growth, because the prints were
never before hung together chronologically. Even the
Grolier Club, in New York, was forced, for want of space, to
make two separate shows. Before Whistler exhibited his
Venetian plates, even artists knew nothing but the French
Set and the Thames Set. The intermediate stages in
the gradual development were not known, and the Venetian
plates seemed a new thing. But the only difference between
these and the Thames series is entirely one of development.
Whistler always spoke of the Black Lion Wharf as boyish,
though it is impossible to conceive of anything in its way
more complete in drawing. His estimate of it has been
accepted by many. Mr. Bernhard Sickert, in writing of
the plate, thinks it misleading to say that every tile, every
beam has been drawn. " These details are merely filled in
with a certain number of strokes of a certain shape, accepted
as indicating the materials of which they are constructed."
When an etching is in pure line and owes little to the printer,
as in this case, it is the wonderful arrangement of lines, the
wonderful lines themselves, which make you feel that every-
thing, every beam and every tile, has been drawn ; that every
detail actually has been drawn, we did not suppose anybody
would be so absurd as to imagine. The character of the
280 [1880

VENICE

lines gives you this impression, which is exactly what the
artist wanted. It has been said by another critic that
Whistler exhausted all his blacks on the houses. He did
nothing of the sort. He concentrated them there, and did
not take away from the interest of the wharf he was drawing
by an equal elaboration in the boats, the barges, and the
figures. As he grew older and practised more, he gave up
his literal, definite, firm method of work. Instead of drawing
the panes of a window in firm outline, for instance, he sug-
gested them by drawing the shadows and the reflected light
with short crisp strokes, and scarcely any outline at all.
In the Black Lion Wharf, he got the light and shade on his
building by different bitings. In Venice, it was done by
suggesting the shadows. In both series, the small figures
in movement are nearly the same, but there is a great advance
in the drawing in the Venice plates, where they are simply
indicated to give the idea of motion and life. If you compare
the Millbank and the Lagoon, you find in both the subject,
or the dominating lines in the subject, to be the same, a
series of posts carrying the eye from the foreground to the
extreme distance, but their treatment in the Venetian plate
is far more direct and expressive. Simplicity of expression
has never been carried further. Probably the finest plate,
in its simplicity and directness, is The Bridge. Whistler now
obtained the same quality of richness by his manner of
suggesting detail, and also by his printing. In The Traghetto
in Venice, there is the same scheme as in the early prints of
The Miser and The Kitchen, but the Venice plate is more
painter-like in quality. Without taking away from the
etched line, he has given a fulness of tone which makes the
background of The Burgomaster Six seem weak in comparison.
He was now doing his own printing for the first time to
any extent. There were a hundred prints of the first Series
of Twelve in Venice. Of a few plates, the prints were not
1880] 281

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

all pulled by him, and the difference between his printing
and Goulding's is unmistakable. In the hand of any pro-
fessional printer, save Mr. Goulding, plates like The Traghetto
andThe Beggars would be a mass of scratches, though scratches
of interest to the artist ; it required Whistler's skill as a
printer to bring out what he wanted, and to make them
what they are. And it was the more surprising that he
could develop his printing as he did in Venice, because the
conditions were so primitive. Mr. Bacher had a portable
press which interested him, but most of his printing was done
on the old press to which we have referred. Whistler vehe-
mently protested, as we often heard him, against the printer,
his pot of treacle and his couches of ink. But no great
artist ever carried the printing of etchings further than he,
or ever made such use of printer's ink as he did in some of
these plates. Without the wash of ink, all it is however,
they would be the faintest ghosts of themselves, with no
interest, and he was justified in using ink as he wished, when
it made his proof better. And he used it in all sorts of ways
on the same plates, to try endless experiments with ever-
varying results, even to cover up the rather weak lines of
an indifferent design, as in Nocturne — Palaces, prized highly
by collectors, but one of his poorest plates. It and The
Garden, Nocturne — Shipping, and one or two besides are by
no means equal to the others. But there are no such perfect
plates in the world as The Beggars, The Traghetto, the two
Rivas and The Bridge.

Mr. Frank Short has written us an interesting note on
Whistler as printer, and since it relates partly to the Venetian
plates and to his methods when he printed them, it can
appropriately be quoted here :

" I am very bad at remembering dates, &c., but my acquaintance

with Whistler began about 1885. We used in those days to

send things that were going to exhibitions, the day before sending

282 [1880

VENICE

in, to the Hogarth Club, and an etching of mine was there that
Whistler liked ; and next day he came to my very small studio
in Chelsea to tell me so, and gave me at the same time a ticket
for his Ten o'Clock. I always look upon this visit as an ex-
ceedingly kind thing for him to do. After that, when I had a
studio in the Wentworth Yard, he often came in to talk on
technical matters in etching, &c., and sometimes brought in a
batch of plates for me to lay rebiting grounds for him. I never
remember laying a first ground for him ; but he several times
asked me to take out or lighten lines on plates, which I did. I
must have had a considerable number, one time and another,
but I cannot recall which they were. He used occasionally to
come in to prove a plate and a good many of the Venice plates
were defaced in my studio (with the heaviest needles I could
find him), and a couple of proofs were taken with the scratches
on. I never printed an edition with him. The last time he
printed with me was in July 1900, when he came down here
[Brook Green] with nine or ten plates, and we printed a few
proofs of each. Some of these plates were slight, but several
carried a good way.* He, as usual, worked a little in dry-point
between each proof. I think he intended coming to print, &c.,
a good deal at this time, but I think he got ill. I remember he
said the ' etching fit ' was on him again. I think he liked some
one to print with him — some one that he could leave the ink
and the press to, and be only concerned himself with the wiping.
I was always a little surprised that he left the ink mixing to me —
' Make it your own way,' he would say, ' a dark nutty brown.' He
said he had come to the conclusion that too brown (or too light)
an ink was an affectation.

" I think he knew that I was always delighted to give him
any help I could ; but yet he was careful to bring me a proof,
now and again, that he thought I should like. I remember he
insisted on the Fine Art Society giving me a proof of one of the
Venice plates, because I lacquered the plates when they were
defaced. He said : ' I have told them they must let you choose
a proof, so you must go up and choose one.' I did — one of the
best proofs of The Traghetto I know !

" As to the printing : when with me he always kept the plate
slightly warm in the usual manner. If he was using very weak

* These were the last Paris plates.
1880] 283

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

ink, I daresay he would work with a cold plate, as one sometimes
does. Also, he always left his plate rag-wiped, but, as years
went on, he seemed more and more particular to get the surface
as clean as possible (with the muslin). His continual grumble
was ' not clean enough.' As for retroussage, he would have none
of it. So that (and this I like to think) his printing was perfectly
simple. I remember once, with a much under-bitten plate, I
suggested hand-wiping. He said : ' Well, I have done that
sometimes,' and proceeded to do it : but he had just before been
putting on dry-point and hadn't taken off the burr, which, of
course, shouted out with the hand-wiping ; and he said, it won't
do, and finished again with the muslin. Nevertheless, I could
have got a better proof off that plate with the hand ! "

While printing, Whistler was continually working on his
plates, which accounts for the extraordinary variety existing
in different examples of the same etching. A curious fact
about The Traghetto and The Beggars is that, of each, there
were two plates. He was displeased with the first Traghetto,
and etched it over again, and the same thing must have
happened to The Beggars. Mr. Bacher writes that The
Traghetto " troubled him very much." He pulled one fine
proof and then overworked the plate so that he had to prepare
a second one. He had another copper of the same size and
thickness made by the Venetian from whom they all got
their plates. When this was ready, the first plate was
" inked " with white paint, instead of black ink, passed
through the press, and a proof pulled. This was placed on
the second plate, already varnished, which was then run
through the press. The result was " a replica in white upon
the black etching ground." Mr. Bacher says that upon the
new plate Whistler worked for days and weeks with the first
proof before him, that he might find and etch only the lines
in the original.

" The printing of this plate was an exciting moment. As

the gentle old printer of Venice pulled the plate through the

284 [1880

VENICE

massive wooden rollers, heavily padded with felt blankets,
nothing was heard but the squeaking of the old wooden press.
It was the supreme moment of joy or of keen disappointment —
it was the end of the journey and, fortunately, the new proof was
exquisite. It was another Traghetto, the one we now know, but
it was not a duplicate of that marvellous first proof. Whistler
placed the two proofs side by side and minutely compared them."

And he was pleased, for the examination ended in the one
song he allowed himself in Venice :

" We don't want to fight,
But, by jingo ! if we do,
We've got the ships,
We've got the men,
And got the money too-oo-oo ! "

The first proofs of other plates, we believe, were very
unsatisfactory. Each proof, therefore, was a trial, and, as
each was pulled, he worked upon the plate, not, of course,
taking out large slabs or putting in new passages to make quite
a new state of it, but strengthening lines or lightening them,
giving richness to a shadow or modelling to a little figure.
It would be impossible, if you had not the hundred proofs
of one of these Venetian plates by you, to say how much
he did do or what he did in each, but the first proof is abso-
lutely different from the last, and probably no two are alike.
Some of them, from the veriest ghost, became the richest,
fullest prints.

In his Venice etchings, Whistler also developed what he
called the Japanese method of drawing, Bacher calls his
secret, and Menpes the secret of drawing. Whistler always
spoke frankly about it to us, from the first time J. saw him
etching, and he followed the same method in his lithographs.
In etching or lithography, where it is difficult to make correc-
tions, and where the surface of the plate or the stone should
not be disturbed, it is not easy, by the ordinary manner in
which drawing is taught, to put a complicated design on the
1880] 285

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

plate properly, without elaborate spacing, tracing, or a pre-
liminary sketch. Frequently, when the design is half made
in the usual fashion, the artist finds that the point of greatest
interest, the subject of his picture, will not come on the plate
where he wants it. The Japanese always seem to get the
design in their colour-prints in the right place, and yet
their technique adds to the difficulty of changing or altering
a design, especially in their prints. But whether this is
because they have the method of drawing Whistler attributed
to them, whether he got his idea from Japanese prints or
evolved it, we do not know. We do know that the idea was
his long before he painted the " Japanese pictures." You
can see the beginning of it in the Isle de la Cite, and Fumette's
Bent Head, and the unfinished Temple Bar. The system,
scientific as all his systems were, is this : to select the exact
spot on the canvas, the lithographic stone, the etching
plate^, or the piece of paper, where the centre of interest is
to be, and to draw this part of his subject. It might be
somewhat near the side of a plate, though he insisted that
the composition should always be placed well within the frame
or the plate, contrary as such treatment is to Japanese
methods and his own early practice. As we have already
pointed out, in the early paintings, sprays of flowers, or
branches of trees run into the picture to give the impression
that it is carried beyond the frame, as is done repeatedly
in Japanese art. But his theory, perfected before the Venetian
period and adhered to as long as he lived, was that every-
thing of any interest should be well within the frame or plate
mark, as far within as the subject was from him. Having
then selected the point of principal interest, he drew that,
and drew it completely, and there, on his plate, or his stone,
was a picture. It might be, as Mr. Menpes says, a distant
view of palaces and the shipping beneath a bridge ; in
London it was frequently a shop window ; in Paris, a dark
286 [1880

VENICE

doorway ; in portraits, the sitter's head. Whatever it was,
once he had put it down, he drew in the surrounding objects,
or those next in importance, all the while carrying out the
work completely and making it into one harmonious whole.
The result was that the picture was finished — " finished
from the beginning " — and there was always about it, on
the plate, paper or stone, a space which he could fill up with
less important details, or leave as he chose. With his
painting, it was a different problem. When the subject
was arranged, it grew together, all over at the same time.
But, in some of the earlier pictures, Old Battersea Bridge, for
example, a piece of canvas seems to have been added, though
he maintained that the artist should confine himself to the
size of the canvas he selected, and not get over his blunders,
as so many do, by adding to, or taking from it. All this
requires the greatest care in just what Whistler considered
so important, the placing of the subject. Working in this
manner, always with the completed picture before him, he
could return to it again and add further work, if he thought
it was needed, knowing he had his subject down. It sounds
simple, so simple that one day, when he had been explaining
it to Mr. E. A. Walton, and the latter said : " But there is no
secret ! " Whistler's answer was : " Yes, there is, the secret
is in doing it." It is just this, in the doing it, that the
excellence of his work lies. As a matter of fact, it is difficult
to restrain one's self to drawing completely the heart of a
subject, while, in painting, still more restraint is necessary
the restraint imposed by colour.

Besides etchings and pastels, Whistler made water-colours
in Venice, but as they were never all shown together, it is
impossible to say how many ; and there were a few oils.
The most important is Nocturne, Blue and Gold, St. Mark's,
exhibited at the British Artists' and the London Memorial
Exhibition, to which it was lent by Mr. J. J. Cowan. Mr.
1880] 287

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Bacher speaks of one from the windows of the Casa Jankovitz,
" the Salute and a great deal of sky and water, with the
buildings very small," and of a third, a scene at night, from
a cafS near the Royal Gardens. Mr. Brooks has told us of
another, a Nocturne of the Giudecca, with shipping, on a panel,
which Whistler gave to Mr. Jobbins, who thought so little
of it that he painted a sketch on the back, and then sold it
to Mr. Brooks, who still has it. Doubtless there were others,
but we know of none that were included in exhibitions and
catalogues, and can so be identified.

388 [1880

PORTRAIT OF Sill HENRY IRVING AS PHILIP OF SPAIN

/
Arraitgenteui in Itlm-k \o. III.

STUDY FOR THE " IRVING

(Etching)

CHAPTER XXIII. BACK IN LONDON. THE
YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY TO EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY-ONE

BY the end of November 1880, Whistler was in London
again. " Years of battle," M. Duret calls the period
that followed, and Whistler had come back prepared for
the fight.

He arrived when the Fine Art Society least expected him.
A show of Twelve Great Etchers had opened, a press was in
the gallery, Mr. Goulding was giving practical demonstrations
of printing, etching was " upon the town."

" Well, you know, I was just home — nobody had seen me —
and I drove up in a hansom. Nobody expected me. In one
hand, I held my long cane ; with the other, I led by a ribbon a
beautiful little white Pomeranian dog — it too, had turned up
suddenly. As I walked in, I spoke to no one, but putting up
my glass, I looked at the prints on the wall. ' Dear me ! dear
me ! ' I said, ' still the same old sad work ! Dear me ! ' And
Haden was there, talking hard to Brown, and laying down the
law — and as he said ' Rembrandt,' I said ' Ha ha ! ' and he
vanished, and then ! "

He was without house and studio, and lived in Wimpole
Street with his brother until he took lodgings in Langham
Street and then in Alderney Street.* He at once set to work
printing the hundred sets of the twelve plates, for few had
been pulled in Venice. The Fine Art Society moved the press
to a room upstairs, over their shop, and here old friends came

* The record of this is in the etching published in the Gazette det Beaux-Arts,
April 1881.
1880] I:T 289

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

to see him, W. M. Rossetti and Pellegrini especially remem-
bered among the many, and here Mr. Mortimer Menpes says, he
first met Whistler, and, dropping Poynter, South Kensington
and his own ambition, hastened to throw himself at the feet
of " the master " and inscribe himself a pupil. It was
not an ideal workshop, and the Fine Art Society took two
rooms for Whistler in Air Street, Regent Street, on the first
floor of a house with a bow window looking out under the
colonnade : the window from which he etched the plate of
the now demolished Quadrant.

According to Mr. T. R. Way, he and his father often came
to Air Street to help Whistler with the printing. The press
was in the front room, and Mr. Way made a sketch of it in
colour, his father damping the paper, Whistler inking a plate,
the press between them ; an interesting document, for in
this little room a number of prints for the Series of Twelve
Etchings were pulled. The work was interrupted by occasional
excitements. Mr. Way says, one day Whistler placed on his
heater a bottle of nitric acid and water tightly stopped up.
The stopper blew out, steaming acid fumes filled the room,
and they had to run for their lives into a bedroom where
Whistler never seems to have slept. Another time, they
took corrosive sublimate, or something as deadly, to get the
dried ink from the lines of plates not properly cleaned in
Venice, and they dropped the corrosive sublimate on the
floor, and, Mr. Way adds, there was not much left of the
carpet. Why anything was left of the floor or of themselves
is a mystery. Then, Mr. Menpes says :

" Whistler drifted into a room in my own house, which I had
fitted up with printing materials, and it was in this little printing-
room of mine that most of the series of Venetian etchings were
printed."

The edition of a hundred sets was, however, not completed

290 [1880

BACK IN LONDON

during Whistler's lifetime. It was only after his death that
Mr. Goulding finished the work.

The first series of Venetian plates was exhibited in
December 1880, and hung by themselves in the Middle Room
at the Fine Art Society's. The Twelve were selected
from the forty plates Whistler brought back with him. The
critics could see nothing in them. The Academy thought
that they might have been enjoyed at home, but to make
of them an exhibition was a mistake. Truth dismissed them
as " another crop of Whistler's little jokes." They did not
represent any Venice that the Times cared to remember,
" for who wants to remember the degradation of what has
been noble, the foulness of what has been fair ? " They
were " too slight in execution and unimportant in size " to
satisfy the World. One after another, the popular authorities
repeated the Attorney-General's decision that Whistler was
amusing, and Burne-Jones' regret that he had not fulfilled
his early promise. Whistler carefully collected the criticisms
for future use, though one of them he answered immediately,
the World's:

" Seriously, then, my Atlas, an etching does not depend, for its
importance, upon its size. ' I am not arguing with you — I am
telling you.' ... Be severe with your man. Tell him his ' job '
should be ' neatly done.' I could cut my own throat better ;
and if need be, in case of his dismissal, I offer my services.
Meanwhile, yours joyously."

" What a funny dog it is ! " was the editorial comment,
and the public endorsed it.

Mr. Brown, of the Fine Art Society, was going to New
York before Christmas, and it was arranged that he should
take with him a set of the Twelve. Whistler spent a Sunday
pulling prints for the purpose, Mr. Brown at his side, the
press never left, except for a sandwich. The journey was
not a success. The etchings were no more appreciated or

1880] 291

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

wanted in New York than in London. Only eight sets were
ordered.

In the meanwhile, Whistler was preparing for his show
of pastels.

" Jimmy called — as self-reliant and sure as ever, full of con-
fidence in the superlative merit of his pastels, which we are to
go and see,"

is Mr. Alan S. Cole's note of Whistler's first visit after his
return (January 2, 1881). This show also was at the Fine Art
Society's. Whistler designed the frames ; he saw to the
catalogue, which had the brown paper cover but not quite
the form eventually adopted, and was printed by Mr. Way ;
he decorated the gallery, an arrangement in gold and brown*
which was enjoyed as " another of his little jokes " by the
critics on press day (January 28). Godwin was one of the
few who admitted its beauty, and his description in the British
Architect (February 1881) has the value of a contemporary
record :

" First, a low skirting of yellow gold, then a high dado of dull
yellow green cloth, then a moulding of green gold, and then a
frieze and ceiling of pale reddish brown. The frames are arranged
on the line ; but here and there one is placed over another. Most
of the frames and mounts are of rich yellow gold, but a dozen
out of the fifty-three are in green gold, dotted about with a view
of decoration, and eminently successful in attaining it."

On the evening of the press view, Mr. Cole says :

" Whistler turned up for dinner very full of his private view
to-morrow. Later on, we concocted a letter inviting Prince Teck
to come to it. His last draft was all right, but he would insist
on beginning it ' Prince,' although I assured him ' Sir ' was the
us al way of addressing him in a letter."

The private view, the next day (January 29), was a crush,
Bond Street blocked with carriages, the sidewalk crowded

292 [1881

BACK IN LONDON

with people struggling to get in. Nothing like the excite-
ment was ever known at the Fine Art Society's. Millais,
giving an exhibition in the adjoining room, was one of the
first to see the pastels. " Magnificent, fine — very cheeky —
but fine ! " he was heard to say in his big voice, and afterwards
he wrote to Whistler to tell him so, and the letter pleased
Whistler. The*crowd did not know what to say, and, had
they known, would have been afraid to say it. For Whistler
was there, his laugh louder, shriller, than ever. He let no
one forget the trial. An admirer asked the price of a pastel,
and when told, exclaimed : " Sixty guineas ! That's enor-
mous ! " Whistler heard, though he was not meant to ;
he always heard everything. " Ha ha ! Enormous ! why
not at all ! I can assure you it took me quite half an hour
to draw it ! "

People laughed at Whistler's work, because they thought
laughter was what he expected of them. Because he was the
gayest man who ever lived, they refused to see that he was
also the most serious artist : the combination bewildered
them. When they treated his art as part of his gaiety, it
hurt, for he was acutely sensitive, but he had his revenge by
mystifying them still further :

" Well, you know, they thought it was an amiability to me
for them to be amused. One day, when I was on my way to the
Fine Art Society's, while the show was going on, I met Sir and

Lady , face to face, at the door, as they were coming out.

Both looked very much bored, but they couldn't escape me. So
the old man grasped my hand and chuckled : ' We have just
been looking at your things, and have been so much amused ! '
He had an idea that the drawings on the wall were drolleries
of some sort, though he could not understand why, and that it
was his duty to be amused. I laughed with him. I always did
with people of that kind, and then they said I was not serious."

A shriek of execration went up from the press. The critics

1881] 293

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

too, laughed, but there was venom in their laughter. They
liked to take themselves, if they couldn't take Whistler,
seriously, and they hated work they could not understand.
The pastels were sensational, Whistler was clever, with " a
sort of transatlantic impudence." They objected to the
brown paper, to the technique, to the frames, to the decora-
tions, to the subjects ; they became unexpectedly concerned
for the past glory of Venice. Godwin again was an exception.

" No one who has listened, as the writer of those brief little
notes has, o Whistler's g aphic descriptions of the fairy-like,
open arcaded, winding ;-taircase that lifts its tall stem far into
the blue sky, or of the remarkable facades, yet unrestored, that
speak of the art power of the Venetian architect, can doubt that
he who can so remember and describe has failed to admire. It
is by reason of the strength of this admiration and high appre-
ciation that he holds back in reverence, and exercises this reticence
of the pen i , the needle and the brush."

A number of people expressed their belief in the pastels
by buying them,, and the show was a success financially.
The prices ranged from twenty to sixty guineas, the total
receipts amounted to eighteen hundred. Mr. Bacher quotes
a letter written to him just after the show opened and signed
" Maud Whistler " :

" The best of it is, all the pastels are selling. Four hundred
pounds' worth the first day, now over a thousand pounds' worth
are sold."

Before the exhibition closed, towards the end of February,
Whistler was summoned to Hastings. His mother had been
living there since her illness of 1876-77, from which she never
entirely recovered, but there were often long intervals between
the attacks when her family had no immediate cause for
anxiety. In the end her death was sudden. Those who
refused to see in Whistler any other good quality could not
deny his devotion to his mother ; those to whom he revealed
294 [1881

BACK IN LONDON

the tenderness, under the defiant masque with which he
faced the world, knew what his love for her meant to him.
She had lived with him whenever it was possible. His visits
and letters to Hastings had been frequent. He never forgot
her birthday. He told her of all his success, all his hopes,
and made as light to her as he could of his debts and dis-
appointments. But in the miserable week before the funeral
at Hastings, he was full of remorse ; he should have been
kinder and more considerate, he said ; he had not written
often enough from Venice. Dr. Whistler was with him
part of the time, and the Doctor's wife throughout the
long week. In the afternoons they would wander together
on the windy cliffs above the town, and there was one
grey, miserable afternoon when he broke down utterly.
" It would have been better," he regretted, " had I been
a parson as she wished ! " He had nothing to reproach
himself with. The days in Chelsea were for her as happy
as for him, and she whose pride had been in his first
childish promise at St. Petersburg lived to see the full develop-
ment of his genius. She was buried at Hastings.

It was fortunate for him that, when he got back to town,
events to distract his thoughts from his grief followed fast.
The new Society of Painter-Etchers had arranged to open
their first exhibition in April at the Hanover Gallery. Ameri-
can artists who were just starting etching, and had never
shown prints in London, were invited. Mr. Frank Duveneck,
one of them, sent a series of Venetian prints. This was the
occasion of " the storm in an aesthetic teapot " which, had
not Whistler thought it important as " history," would now
be forgotten. We quote, as he did, from The Cuckoo (April
11, 1881) :

" Some etchings, exceedingly like Mr. Whistler's in manner, but

signed ' Frank Duveneck,' were sent to the Painter- Etchers'

Exhibition from Venice. The Painter-Etchers appear to have

1881] 295

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

suspected for a moment that the works were really Mr. Whistler's ;
and, not desiring to be the victims of an easy hoax on the part
of that gentlemen, three of their members — Dr. Seymour Haden,
Dr. Hamilton and Mr. Legros — went to the Fine Art Society's
Gallery in Bond Street, and asked one of the assistants there to
show them some of Mr. Whistler's Venetian plates. From this
assistant they learned that Mr. Whistler was under an arrangement
to exhibit and sell his Venetian etchings only at the Fine Art
Society's Gallery."

Whistler heard of this. On March 18 he called on Mr.
Cole, who found him " highly incensed with Haden and Legros
conspiring to make out he was breaking his contract with
the Fine Art Society." In his first indignation, Whistler
went straight to the Hanover Gallery, Mr. Menpes with him,
but the three members were not to be found there. Haden
then wrote to the Fine Art Society that they knew all about
Mr. Duveneck, and were delighted with his etchings, and he
expressed regret. But it is incredible that two etchers like
Haden and Legros could have mistaken the work of Duveneck
for that of Whistler.

Whistler published the whole story in a pamphlet called
The Piker Papers. Piker was the name of a newsagent who
had become involved. With its interest a little dulled by
time, the correspondence may be read in The Gentle Art.

Whistler had not forgotten the pictures left, before the
bankruptcy, with Mr. Graves in Pall Mall. By degrees he
bought them back. When Mr. Algernon Graves consulted
his father about letting Whistler have the pictures upon
which the full amount was not paid, as well as the Nocturnes,
for three of which Whistler had repaid a hundred pounds,
the father said : " Let him take the whole lot, and don't be
a fool ; the pictures aren't worth twenty-five pounds apiece."
The Rosa Corder was sold at Christie's with Howell's other
effects, Mr. Algernon Graves agreeing that, if it brought more
than the money Howell owed the firm, Howell's executors
296 [1881

STUDY FOR "UOSA CORDKR"

ROSA CORDER

BACK IN LONDON

could have the balance. The father maintained the picture
wouldn't fetch ten pounds, but it brought more than the
amount of their bill, some hundred and thirty pounds. The
Irving was sold to Sir Henry for a hundred pounds, and
the Miss Franklin went to Messrs. Dowdeswell. Whistler
continued to pay his bills regularly as they came due, to
Graves' great astonishment ; there was only one exception
and then Whistler came down to ask to have the payment
postponed, and this was not settled until long after the
pictures were in Whistler's possession. When Whistler
paid the final sum, Mr. Graves expressed his surprise. But
Whistler said :

' You have been a very good friend to me — in fact you have
been my banker. You have acted honourably to me in the whole
matter. I meant to pay, and I have done so."

These business details and his own exhibitions left
Whistler no time to think of the annual shows of 1881. He
had nothing in the Salon, and in the Grosvenor only Miss
Alexander, painted and exhibited in London years before.
In the autumn, however, borrowing the Mother from Mr.
Graves, he sent it to the Academy in Philadelphia, the
arrangements being made for him by Mrs. Anna Lea Merritt.
She writes us :

" In the autumn of 1881, I was asked by the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts to receive pictures by American artists,
and have them forwarded for exhibition, and especially they
entreated me to persuade M-. Whistler to send a picture. He
had never been represented in any American exhibition. I
obtained a chance, when meeting him at a dinner, of pressing the
subject more vigorously than I could have done by writing, and
he promised to send his mother's portrait. It was collected in
due course and deposited in my studio, then in the ' Avenue.'
Mr. Whistler came immediately after and as the canvas was
breaking away from the stretcher, he directed the packing agents
who were skilful frame makers, to restrain it and then left me.
1881] 297

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

As soon as the canvas was made tight, spots of crushed varnish
appeared on the surface. The varnish, in fact, broke or crumbled
and I feared the canvas might have broken. I flew down the
street, overtook him, and brought him back, dreading that he
would blame us and even that some injury had been done. To
my surprise, he took the misfortune with perfect composure
and kindness, and stippled the spots with some solvent varnish
that soon restored the even surface. And there was never a
word of suggestion that we had done any harm. Of course, I
knew the fault was not in anything that had been done, and it
was by his own order, but from all I had heard about him I
trembled. The greatest difficulty in connection with that
exhibition was to persuade him to journey to the American
Consulate in St. Helen's Place and make his affidavit for the
invoice. It had to be done by himself and it was not pleasant,
as we know, to waste a day, the very middle of the day, in this
dull declaration of American citizen sojourning in England.
After the cases were ready for shipment, there was still delay
to get this task accomplished, and I think the Pennsylvania
Academy hardly guess how much persuading it took. What a
pity they did not secure the beautiful picture for his own country.
Now that it hangs in the Luxembourg, they envy it."

The Mother was exhibited in two or three other American
cities before it was returned, in June 1882, and could have been
bought for twelve hundred dollars. Although it did not
fetch this trumpery price, it stimulated interest in the artist
and in his etchings when they were shown in several American
galleries. Societies of etchers were at this period being formed
by American artists, and exhibitions of etchings organised in
the principal towns. There was a show of American etchings
in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1881, another in 1882 in
the New York Etching Club, while the Philadelphia Society
of Etchers gave in this year its first international exhibition.
Haden, encouraged by Mr. Frederick Keppel, came to the
United States to lecture on etching. Articles in Scribner's
on Whistler and Haden, helped to increase the interest. We
remember the excitement made by Haden's lectures which
298 [1881

BACK IN LONDON

prepared the public for a more critical study of Whistler, whose
prints were in both the New York and Philadelphia Exhibi-
tions. Mr. Claghorn, almost the only Philadelphian who
then cared for etchings, had already collected Whistler's
prints. Mr. Avery, in New York, had some years before
begun his collection and secured for it many of the rarest
proofs. But, generally speaking, in America more had been
heard of Whistler's eccentricities than of his work. It could,
however, no longer remain unknown, once his etchings and
the portrait of the Mother were seen, and The White Girl was
lent to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it hung
for some time. And, gradually the young men who had
been with him in Venice, coming back, helped to spread his
fame at home, and, when Americans got to know his work,
they became the keenest to possess it.

1881J 299

CHAPTER XXIV. THE JOY OF LIFE.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE
TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-FOUR

O

N May 26, 1881, Mr. Alan S. Cole

" met Jimmie, who is taking a new studio in Tite Street, where
he is going to paint all the fashionables — views of crowds com-
peting for sittings — carriages along the streets."

It was at No. 13, close to the White House. Whistler
decorated it with a scheme of yellow : one felt in it as if
standing inside an egg, Howell said. He again picked up
blue and white, and old silver ; he again gave his Sunday
breakfasts, and they again became the talk of the town, and
he the fashion. If the town was determined to talk, Whistler
was determined it should have good reason. He was never
so malicious, never so extravagant, never so *' joyous," as
at this period. He deliberately wrapped himself for pro-
tection, as he afterwards said, " in a species of misunder-
standing." He filled the papers with letters, each a
delicately barbed little arrow, meant to hurt. London
re-echoed with his laugh. His white lock stood up more
defiantly above his curls ; his cane lengthened ; a series
of collars sprang from the neck of the long overcoat, his
hat borrowed a flatter brim, a lower tilt over his eyes ; he
invented amazing costumes — " in great form, with a new
fawn-coloured long-skirted frock-coat, and extraordinary
long cane," Mr. Cole found him one summer day in 1882.
He allowed no break in the gossip, no pause for the town
to take breath.
300 [1881

THE JOY OF LIFE

The carriages brought the expected crowds, but not the
sitters. Few had been eager to sit to him before the trial,
now there were fewer. In the 'eighties, as M. Duret says,
it needed courage to be painted by Whistler : to do so was
to risk notoriety, if not ridicule. Mrs. (now Lady) Meux,
was the first to give him a commission at this difficult moment,
and she has been well repaid for her heroism. The two large
full-lengths he painted of her are amongst his most distin-
guished portraits. She was handsome, of a more luxuriant
type than the women who usually sat to him, her full-blown
beauty a contrast to the elusive loveliness of " Maud " in
the Fur Jacket, or of Mrs. Leyland, and to the quiet dignity of
Mrs. Huth. Whistler found for her harmonies appropriate
to her beauty. The first was an Arrangement in White and
Black, which few people have seen. There is a sumptuousness
in the black of the shadowy background and the velvet
gown, in the white of the fur of the long cloak, that Whistler
never surpassed. M. Duret, who often saw the portrait in the
studio, found in it something " mysterious and fantastic " ;
to us, the firm modelling of the face and beautiful bare neck
and arms, gives to the almost regal figure more solidity than
Whistler usually tried for, and less of the spirit, the phantom,
that Desnoyers, and Huysmans after him, found in Whistler's
paintings of women. Whistler was pleased with it, and
spoke of it as his "beautiful Black Lady." Lady Meux was
so well satisfied that she at once posed for a second portrait.
This time the Harmony was in Flesh-Colour and Pink, after-
wards changed to Pink and Grey. She was once more painted
standing, wearing a curious round hat low over her head
and face, and a high bodice with long sleeves, cut in the
ugly fashion of the day, which cannot conceal or deform
the beauty of her figure.

There was a third, smaller portrait which, as far as
we can find out, was never finished. Mr. Menpes has
1881] 301

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

published the reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing, in
the possession of Mr. C. W. Dowdeswell, of Lady Meux in
bonnet and coat, her hands in a muff, which may have been
the study or suggestion for it. Mr. Harper Pennington,
writing of this picture, says,

" The only time I saw Jimmy * stumped ' for a reply was at
a sitting of Lady Meux (for the portrait in sables). For some
reason Jimmy became nervous — exasperated — and impertinent.
Touched by something he had said, her ladyship turned softly
towards him and remarked, quite softly : ' See here, Jimmy
Whistler ! You keep a civil tongue in that head of yours, or
I will have in some one to finish those portraits you have made
of me ! ' — with the faintest emphasis on ' finish.' Jimmy fairly
danced with rage. He came up to Lady Meux, his long brush
tightly grasped, and actually quivering in his hand, held tight
against his side. He stammered, spluttered — and finally gasped
out : ' How dare you ? How dare you ? ' — but that, after all,
was not an answer, was it ? Lady Meux did not sit again. Jimmy
never spoke of the incident afterwards, and I was sorry to have
witnessed it."

Sir Henry Cole posed again for his portrait. Mr. Alan S.
Cole saw it in the studio on February 26, 1882 :

" Found his commencement of my father, good but slight,
full length, evening clothes, long dark cloak thrown back, red
ribbon of Bath."

Another sitting, of which there is a note, was on April 17 :

" In spite of his illness, my father to Whistler's, who fretted
him by not painting — my father thought that Jimmy had merely
touched the light on his shoes, and nothing else — although he
stood and sat for over an hour and a half."

This was the last sitting. The next day Sir Henry Cole
died suddenly, a distinguished official lost to England, a good
friend lost to Whistler. Eldon, who was in the studio on
the 17th, recalled afterwards that his last words on leaving
were : " Death waits for no man ! " Whistler meant to go
302 [1882

THE JOY OF LIFE

on with the portrait. On May 2, Mr. Cole went again to
Tite Street :

" After a long delay, Jimmy showed me his painting of my
father, which J. can make into a very good thing."

But it was never finished. Neither was a full-length
of Eldon, a friend much with him at the time. We
have seen a photograph of it, a fine thing evidently, but it
also has vanished, though a small version was sent to the
London Memorial Exhibition, where, however, it was not
hung. During the next few years, innumerable other portraits
were begun, but though we have photographs of several,
it is not always possible to identify them. One, an Arrange-
ment in Yellow, of which he hoped great things, was
of Mrs. Langtry. In another, he returned to the^ old
scheme of " blue upon blue." Miss Elinor Leyland, " Maud,"
Connie Gilchrist, had stood for it ; Miss Maud Waller now
succeeded them. Mrs. Marzetti, her sister, who always
went with her to the studio, writes :

" As far as I can remember, the sittings commenced in the
early part of 1882. We went two or three times, and then
Whistler painted the face out, as it was not to his liking, although
most people thought it excellent. In those days Maud was very
beautiful. The picture was started on a canvas that already
had a figure on it, and it was turned upside down, and the Blue
Girl's head painted in between the legs. The dress was made
by Mme. Alias, the theatrical costumier, to Whistler's design,
and I believe cost a good deal. In the end the picture was
finished from another model (I do not know who), and was hung
in one of Whistler's exhibitions in Bond Street : it is No. 31 in
the catalogue, and called Scherzo in Blue — The Blue Girl. This
was the same exhibition in which he hung the picture he gave
me, and which in the end I never got (No. 66, Bravura in Brown).
I should have treasured it for two reasons : Whistler's painting,
and also that it was a portrait of Mr. Ridley. The picture, as
Maud stood for it, was to have been in that season's exhibition
at the Grosvenor Gallery, but was not finished. However, it
1882] 303

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

was sent in for the private view, and taken away again the same
night or next morning. We used thoroughly to enjoy our visits
to the studio, that is to say, I did, because I sat and looked on.
I can't say whether Maud enjoyed them as much, probably
not, as we used to get down there about 11 o'clock, have
lunch, and stay all the afternoon, most of which time she
was standing.

" I cannot remember all the callers we used to see there, as
there were so many ; but some of the more frequent visitors I
remember well. There was one man who was always there, all
day long, and we just hated him : I don't know why, as he
seemed very harmless. He was Whistler's shadow. I don't
know who he was, but have an idea that he used to write a bit.
I think he was very poor, and that Whistler pretty well kept him.
I heard some few years ago that he died in a lunatic asylum.
Oscar Wilde was a frequent visitor, also Walter Sickert. Whistler
used to say ' Nice boy, Walter ' ; he was very fond of him then.
Others I remember were two brothers named Story, Frank Miles
(who had a studio just opposite Whistler's) — Renee Rodd as
Whistler used to call him — Major Templar, Lady Archie Camp-
bell, and Mrs. Hungerford. These were all pretty constant
visitors, but there were many others whom I cannot remember.
Whistler was just finishing the portrait of Lady Meux at the
time, and I remember standing for him one day for about five
minutes, while he put the lights in the eyes. If I remember
rightly, it was a full-length portrait in black evening dress, with
a big white cloak over the shoulders.

" Whistler was a most entertaining companion : he was very
fond of telling us Edgar Allen Poe's stories, and also of reciting
The Lost Lenore, which he said was his favourite poem. He
dined with us several times in Lyall Street, he was always late
for dinner, sometimes half an hour, and I think, on more than
one occasion, was sound asleep at the table before the end of
dinner.

" Whistler's usual breakfast, which he often had after we
arrived at the studio, was two eggs in a tumbler, beaten up with
pepper, salt and vinegar, bread and coffee. . . .

" Whistler's mode of painting was most comical : he stood

yards away from the picture with his brush, and would move

it as though he were painting ; he would then take a hop, skip

and jump across the room, and put a dab of paint on the canvas ;

304 [1882

THE YELLOW BUSKIN (LADY ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL)
Arrangement in Black, No. I'll.

THE JOY OF LIFE

he also used to wet his finger, and gently rub portions of
his picture. I have often seen him take a sponge with soap
and water, and wash the Blue GirVs face (on the canvas, I
mean)."

Lady Archibald Campbell, whom Mrs. Marzetti met in
the studio, was a woman of great distinction and beauty,
with the intelligence to see in Whistler a master. She
writes us :

" He was a great friend of ours. I think I sat to him during
a year or so, off and on, for a very great many studies in different
costumes and poses. His first idea was to paint me in court dress.
The dress was black velvet, the train was silver satin with the
Argyle arms embroidered in applique in their proper colours. He
made a sketch of me in the dress. The fatigue of standing with
the train was too great, and he abandoned the idea. In all
these studies I remember he called my attention to his method
of placing his subject well within the frame, and explaining that
a portrait must be more than a portrait, must be of value deco-
ratively, that is to say, it must be decorative in purpose. He
never patched up defects, but if with any portion of his work
he became dissatisfied, he covered the canvas over afresh with
his first impression freshly recorded. The first impression
thrown on the canvas he often put away, often destroyed. Among
others, he made in oil colour an impression of me as Orlando, in
the forest scene of As You Like It, at Coombe. He considered
this successful. A picture which he called The Grey Lady was a
harmony in silver greys. I remember thinking it was a master-
piece of drawing, giving the impression of movement. I was
descending the steps of a stair, the canvas was of a great height,
and the general effect very striking. That picture was almost
completed, when my absence from town prevented a continuance
of the sittings. When I returned, he asked to make a study of
me in the dress in which I called upon him. This is the picture
which he exhibited under the name of The Brodequin Jaune, or
The Yellow Buskin. I understand it is now at Philadelphia. As
far as I remember, it was painted in a very few sittings. When
I saw him very shortly before his death, I remember asking
after The Grey Lady. He laughed, and said he had destroyed
her."
1882] i:u 305

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

M. Duret suggests that, in the end, the ridicule of her
friends had their effect on Lady Archibald Campbell, or
perhaps that her beauty gave her the right to capriciousness ;
anyhow, she suggested changes to Whistler, who, though
he seldom accepted suggestions from his sitters, did his best
to meet her wishes until it seemed as if, to please her, he
must repaint his picture, and he was seized with discourage-
ment. We have heard of a dramatic scene just outside the
studio : Lady Archibald Campbell in a hansom, on the point
of driving away never to return ; M. Duret springing on the
step, representing to her the loss to the world of the master-
piece if she refused to stand for it again, and arguing so well
that she did come back, and The Yellow Buskin was saved
from the fate of The Grey Lady and The Lady in Court Dress.
Her story of the sittings shows that her social duties, her
absences from town, were the reason of apparent unwilling-
ness. Some think the one portrait of her that was finished
is Whistler's greatest. It has not only the decorative value
she says he insisted upon, but great distinction in the figure
and face, character in the pose as she stands there fastening
her glove, and splendid colour. It is one of Whistler's several
Arrangements in Black. Critics of the day could discover
in the series only dinginess and dirt. One wit described the
picture as the portrait of a lady pursuing the last train
through the smoke of the Underground. Now, however,
people have learned to see, or at least to know they should
see, beauty and variety in Whistler's blacks and greys, and
few would deny that the picture is a masterpiece of colour.
Whistler exhibited it first as the portrait of Lady Archibald
Campbell, but afterwards as The Yellow Buskin, its title
in the Wilstach Collection, Philadelphia, to which it now
belongs.

M. Duret was posing to Whistler at the same time. When
Lady Archibald Campbell could not come, Whistler would
306 [1882

THE JOY OF LIFE

telegraph for him. Almost day by day, he watched the
progress of her portrait as he saw his own growing under
Whistler's brush. Business brought M. Duret often to
London at this time, and Whistler had no truer friend. He
had always been much with artists in Paris, had been inti-
mate with Courbet, and was still with Fantin, Manet and
Bracquemond. He saw the genius of men at whom the
world still scoffed. It was he, who, by his article on Whistler,
in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, April 1881, reprinted in Critique
cTAvant Garde (1885), made the French realise their mistake
of many years, and again give Whistler the recognition they
had long denied him.

The etching of Alderney Street was printed with M. Duret's
article in the Gazette, though three years earlier the editor
could not " afford " Whistler's price, and Whistler regretted
that he could not " afford " to be born in the Gazette. The
absence of sitters left Whistler leisure to carry out many of
his pictorial schemes. M. Duret says that one evening in
1883, after a private view, they were talking over the pictures,
and in discussing the portrait of the President of some
Society, Whistler decided that the red robes of office were
not in character with the modern head, and that a man should
be painted in clothes as modern as himself, and he asked M.
Duret to come and pose to him that he might show what
could be done with evening dress, the despair of painters.
The experiment was not so original as M. Duret seems to
think. The portrait of Leyland was done ten years before,
and in it Whistler proved the truth of Baudelaire's assertion
that the great colourist can get colour from materials as
simple as a black coat, a white cravat or shirt, and a dark
background. Sir Henry Cole also stood for him in evening
clothes. Nor did Whistler rely entirely upon so simple a
scheme in his portrait of M. Duret, who was made to stand
with a pink domino hanging over his arm, and a red fan in

1882] 307

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

his hand, and the portrait was an Arrangement in Flesh
Colour and Black.

M. Duret describes Whistler at work. He marked slightly
with chalk the place for the figure on the canvas, and began
at once to put in his colours as they were to remain in the
finished work, so that, at the end of the first sitting, the
design of the portrait was seen. This was the rapid method
of sketching in a full-length figure, that delighted Whistler
in the Irving. The difficulty with him was not to begin a
portrait, but to finish it. The picture was brought almost
to completion, scraped down, begun again, and repainted
ten times. From many of Whistler's sitters come stories
of his struggles as draughtsman. M. Duret, who lived much
with painters, saw that it was a question not of drawing, but
of colour, of tone, and understood Whistler's theory that to
bring the whole into harmonious relation, and preserve it,
the whole must be repainted as a whole, if there is any re-
painting at all, and not merely in parts. There are finer
portraits, but not many that show so well Whistler's meaning
when he said that colour is " the arrangement of colour."
The rose of the domino, the fan, and the flesh, is so skilfully
managed that it flushes the cold grey of the background with
rose. M. Duret, when he shows you the picture, in his
apartment at Paris, will take a sheet of paper, cut a hole in
it, and place it against the background, to prove that the
grey, when surrounded by white, is pure and cold, without
a touch of rose, and that Whistler got his effect by his know-
ledge of the relation of colours, and his mastery of the tones
he wished to obtain.

Whistler lost little time in showing the portraits as he
finished them. His Lady Meux, the " beautiful Black
Lady," went to the Salon of 1882, where it was catalogued
as Portrait de M. Harry — Men, to the confusion of|com-
mentators and cataloguers ever since. The Harmony in

308 [1882

LADY MEUX

(Arrangement in Black and H'hite)

THE JOY OF LIFE

Flesh Colour and Pink was shown at the Grosvenor
with several other pictures. The critics were again at a
loss how to take them. The Times was unable to decide
whether Whistler was making fun of them all, or whether
something was wrong with his eyes ; the Pall Mall regretted
that

" if the Lady Meux was full of fine and subtle qualities of drawing,
the Scherzo in Blue was the sketch of a scarecrow in a blue dress
without form and void. It is very difficult to believe that Mr.
Whistler is not openly laughing at us when he holds up before
us such a piece as this. His counterpart in Paris, the eccentric
M. Manet, has at least more sincerity than to exhibit his work
in such an imperfect condition."

But Whistler now had his defenders. An " Art Student "
wrote the next day to the Pall Mall to point out that

" at the private, and therefore, presumably, the press view, The
Blue Girl was seen in an unfinished state, having been sent there
merely to take up its space on the wall. It was removed imme-
diately, and has been since finished. Had the critic seen it
since, he would hardly have called it without form and void.
The want of artistic sincerity is certainly the last charge
that can be brought against a man who has followed his artistic
intention with such admirable and unswerving singleness of
purpose."

From this time onward, Whistler was no longer alone in
fighting his battles.

1882 was the year of The P addon Papers. Mr. Cole wrote
on September 24 :

" To Jimmy's. He lent me proof of his Paddon and Howell
correspondence. Amusing, but too personal for general interest."

We agree with Mr. Cole. There were complications of no
importance with Howell, in which Paddon, a diamond
merchant, figured ; and further complications over the Chinese
cabinet Mr. Morse bought from Whistler when he moved into
1882] 3<>9

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

No. 2 Lindsey Row. For long Mr. Morse was left with only
the lower part, while Howell had the top. Whistler, who
thought nothing concerning him trivial, printed these letters
in a pamphlet, called The P addon Papers ; or, The Owl and
the Cabinet, interesting now, only because it is rare, and
because it marks the end of all relations between himself
and Howell.

In the early winter of 1883, Whistler gave the second
exhibition of his Venetian etchings at the Fine Art Society's.
The prints, fifty-one in number, included several London
subjects. He decorated the gallery in a scheme of white
and yellow. The wall was white with yellow hangings, the
floor was covered with pale yellow matting, and the couches
with pale yellow serge. The few light, cane-bottomed chairs
were painted yellow. There were yellow flowers in yellow
pots, a white and yellow livery for the door attendant, and
white and yellow Butterflies in paper and silk for his friends.
It is remembered that, at the private view, Whistler wore
yellow socks just showing now and then above his low shoes,
and that the young assistants wore yellow neckties. He
prepared the catalogue, its brown paper cover, form and
size now established, and after each title he printed a quotation
from his critics in the past. " Out of their own mouths
shall ye judge them " was the motto on his title-page. A
friend much with him at the time says that he looked over
the proofs with Whistler :

" We came to ' there is merit in them, and I. do not wish to
understand it ' [a quotation from Wedmore's article in the
Nineteenth Century], Jimmy yelled with joy, and thanked the
printer for his intelligent misreading of understate. ' I think we
will let that stand as it is,' he said. I was amused at the private
view to see him discussing the question with Mr. Wedmore, who
naturally, did not think it quite fair."
310 [1883

THE JOY OF LIFE

The result was another little chapter in The Gentle Art.
Before the end of February, the catalogue went into a third
edition. We have a copy of the sixth.

Even before the show opened, it was,

•

" Well, you know, a source of constant anxiety to everybody
and of fun to me. On the ladder, when I was hanging the prints
I could hear whispers — no one would be able to see the etchings !
And then I would laugh, ' Dear me, of course not ! that's all
right. In an exhibition of etchings, the etchings are the last
things people come to see ! ' And then there was the private
view, and I had my box of wonderful little Butterflies, and I
distributed them only among the select few, so that, naturally,
everybody was eager to be decorated. And when the crowd was
greatest, Royalty appeared — quite unprecedented at a private
view, and the crowd wras hustled into another room while the
Prince and Princess of Wales went round the gallery, looking
at everything, the Prince chuckling over the catalogue. ' I say,
Mr. Whistler, what is this ? ' he asked when he came to the
Nocturne — Palaces. ' I am afraid you are very malicious, Mr.
Whistler,' the Princess said."

Those who received the little Butterflies thought them
charming. Mrs. Marzetti writes :

" I have a few treasures which I guard most jealously ; one
is the golden Butterfly that he made us wear at the private
view of one of his exhibitions in Bond Street, in the original
little card box in which he sent them (three, I think) to mother,
with a message written on the lid, and signed with his
Butterfly."

But by the public at large everything was laughed at. The
Butterflies added to the " screaming farce," the " foppery "
of the whole thing. The attendant in yellow and white
livery was nicknamed " the poached egg." The catalogue
was the worst offence. Mr. Wedmore could hardly like to
have it recalled that fourteen months before he had disposed
of Whistler as " years ago ... a person of high promise,"
1883]

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

or the gentleman of the Athenceum to be reminded of his
earlier decision that " in Mr. Whistler's productions one might
safely say that there is no culture." They tried to make
the best of it by refusing to see in him anything save the
jester. The Times compared his humour to Mark Twain's.
The Daily News found the general effect of the show
" excruciatingly agreeable." Funny Folks likened him to
Barnum, and Punch agreed. The Echo thought his work
rubbish — his last little joke was dull without being cheap.
Their ridicule has become ridiculous. As for Whistler's
etchings, the price of the series of Twelve, as of the Twenty-
Six issued a year or so later, in which many of these prints
were published, was fifty guineas ; on May 27, 1908, the single
print, Nocturne — Palaces, sold in Paris for one hundred and
sixty eight guineas.

For the large exhibitions of this year, he had no new work,
but sent two of the earlier Nocturnes to the Grosvenor, and
to the Salon the Mother, for which he was awarded a third-
class medal, the first and only recompense he ever received
at the Salon. In the winter of 1883-84 he worked a great
deal out of doors, spending many weeks at St. Ives, Cornwall.
He took no interest in landscape — " there were too many
trees in the country," he always said. But he loved the sea,
from the days of The Blue Wave at Biarritz and The Shores
of Brittany until one of the last summers of all when he
painted it at Domburg in Holland. The Cornish sketches
were sent to his show of Notes, Harmonies, Nocturnes at the
DowdeswelPs Gallery in May 1884. It was the first exhibition
in which he included many water-colours. The medium had
been difficult to him at first ; now he was its master. He
used it to record subjects as characteristic of London as the
subjects of his pastels were of Venice : the little shops of
Chelsea, the old church, the streets wrapped in the London
atmosphere, the rows of old houses by the river. There were

312 [1884

THE JOY OF LIFE

also studies and sketches brought back from an occasional
journey to Holland, for he was always running about now,
or from the sea-shore near London. The interest of the Cata-
logue this time was in the Preface, VEnvoie he called it. It
gives the Propositions No. 2 which have become famous : that
a picture is finished when all traces of the means that pro-
duced it have disappeared ; that industry in Art is a necessity,
not a virtue ; that the work of the master reeks not of the
sweat of the brow ; that the masterpiece should appear as the
flower to the painter, perfect in its bud as in its bloom. He
decorated the gallery : delicate rose-colour on the walls,
white dado, white chairs and pale azaleas in rose-flushed
jars. The Butterfly, tinted in flesh-colour like the walls, was
on the card of invitation. The Arrangement in Flesh-Colour
and Grey was as little appreciated as the Yellow and White
in 1883, and the critics refused to see in it anything but a
new affectation.

Still signs were not missing of appreciation, and when, in
1884, Whistler sent the Carlyle to the Loan Exhibition
of Scottish National Portraits at Edinburgh, it created
a deep impression. There had already been attempts to
sell the picture. M. Duret tried to interest an Irish collector
who, however, did not dare to buy it in the face of general
hostility and ridicule. It was offered to Mr. Scharfe, director
of the National Portrait Gallery in London, who not only
refused to consider the offer, but laughed at the idea that
such work should pass for painting at all. The first serious
endeavour to secure it for a national collection came from
Mr. George R. Halkett, then quite a young man, who urged
its purchase for the Scottish National Gallery, in a letter to
the Scotsman (October 6, 1884).

" Sm, — Will you give me permission to express a very wide-
spread feeling that an effort should be made to obtain for the
Scottish National Gallery the magnificent portrait of Carlyle, by
1884] i:x 313

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Mr. Whistler, now in the Loan Exhibition. There can be no
question that a National Portrait Gallery, endowed by the
generosity and public spirit of a Scotsman, should possess a
portrait of one of the most eminent of Scotland's sons, and there
can be as little doubt that a more faithful portrait than this of
Whistler's will not readily be obtainable. Mr. Whistler's un-
conventional methods and personal eccentricities, perhaps even
more than Mr. Buskin's ' pot of paint ' criticism, have tended
unduly to discredit him in the popular estimation, and in certain
varieties of his work there may be room for doubt whether he
should be regarded quite seriously. But the present picture is,
in truth, one of the most serious and impressive of his productions,
and has been accepted as such by artists and critics. The
criticism applied by Mr. Brownell in his Scribner article to another
portrait by Whistler — that of his mother — is equally applicable
here : ' in a grave dignity, not without sensibility, a quiet and
almost severe grace that is full of character, it is difficult to
conceive a more charming union of portraiture and picturesque-
ness.' At last year's Salon, Mr. Whistler was awarded a medal
by a jury composed of the leading artists in Paris, and including
men so eminent in their art and yet so opposite in their tendencies
and methods as Bonnat, Cabanel and Bouguereau ; and this
year, as we learn from a competent authority in the Magazine
of Art, this portrait of Carlyle and another exhibit were among
the most popular of the pictures at the Salon. Apart from its
distinctive merits as a work of art, it has been freely admitted
by those who knew Carlyle well to be thoroughly faithful, as
well as a most pathetic, rendering of the ' Sage of Chelsea ' in
his age. . . .

" It would be a great thing for Edinburgh if she were the first
city in this country publicly to recognise what the art-lovers
of France and America have been proclaiming for many a day,
and, while encouraging Mr. Whistler's art, at the same time
obtain a worthy portrait of Thomas Carlyle, himself one of
the earliest and most ardent advocates of a Scottish National
Portrait Gallery. Unlike the national galleries in London
and Dublin we in Scotland have to depend in the meantime
upon private liberality for our art treasures, and it is to be
hoped, in the present instance, that this, our only resource, will
not fail us."

314 [1884

THE JOY OF LIFE

Mr. William Hole supported Mr. Halkett the following
day:

" The picture is one of the best examples of a master who, at
his best, and within his own limits, is almost beyond criticism,
and, considering the great advance in art knowledge made of late
years in Scotland, there are few, I think, who have given the
work careful study and thought, who will not endorse the opinion
already formed by many of the best critics at home and abroad,
that Whistler's Carlyle is one of the noblest examples of modern
portraiture, that its possession, therefore, would add lustre to
any art gallery, and that its subject renders the national collection
of Scotland its most fitting resting-place."

Unfortunately, it was reported that the subscription paper
disclaimed all approval of Whistler's art and theories on the
part of subscribers. Whistler was indignant. He tele-
graphed to Edinburgh : " The price of the Carlyle has
advanced to one thousand guineas. Dinna ye hear the
bagpipes ? " The price originally was four hundred, and
this ended the negotiations.

Why, about this time, Whistler should have become in-
volved in a Church Congress in the Lake Country, unless he
was coming from, or going to, Scotland, we never have been
able to explain. He told us about it years later, and he seemed
no less amazed than we. J. was just about to start for the
Lakes, and Whistler was reminded of his excursion there.
We give the note made at the time, as it is :

Sunday, September 16 (1900). — " Whistler dined, and Agnes
Repplier — not a successful combination. The dinner dragged
until E. J. Sullivan happened to come in, and Whistler woke upf
and, all of a sudden, we hardly know how, he was plunged into
the midst of the Lake Country and a Church Congress, travelling
third class with the clergy and their families, eating jam and
strange meals with quantities of tea, and visiting the Rev. Mr.
Green in his prison, shut up by his bishop for burning candles,
1884] 315

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

and altogether the hero and important person he would neyer be
on coming out. An amazing story, but what Whistler was
doing in the Lakes with the clergy, he did not appear to know —
the story was enough."

The one and only result of the expedition was his impression
of the unpicturesqueness of the Lakes : the mountains
" were all little round hills with little round trees out of a
Noah's Ark."

END OF VOL. I.

Printed by BALLANTVNE &* Co. LIMITED
Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, London

ND Pennel,E.R.andJ.

237 The life of James McNeill

W45F7 Whistler.

1908

v.l

MAN'S
3TORE